I spent a couple of weeks in Gambia at one of the best hotels I have ever stayed at anywhere. The service was excellent as was the standard of accomodation. The tourist attractions were a little bit wanting in terms of needing a bit spent on the but the beach and pool were wonderful.

However Gambia only has 70,000 tourists a year and the pricing of other items of expenditure at restaurants etc. was almost UK level. When visiting India I found the hotels and service we also reasonably expensive but once you were outside the complex, the cost of taxis, visiting sites and eating out were much lower. At times Gambia felt a bit of a rip-off. Nevertheless it shows that West Africa really does have great resources and an ability to offer a great 'medium haul' destination to European clients. This could be a great source of employment and foreign exchange, so when are we going to see similar packages being offered to Ghana and the like?