I have travelled extensively in Egypt for five years and this is the only hotel I have been asked to pay before I stayed!
The he -man receptionist Magdy had me in tears at check in. I should have walked away then. The hotels’ Visa machine was not working, so he ordered me to go to the ATM, and barked at me because I didn’t have a pen. Payment was requested in dollars, I had sterling or local money so when I had procured the cash, it took the hotel until the second day to provide change and no receipt was offered until I requested one. Samy apologized for the way Magdy treated me.
As a solo female traveller, it is not uncommon to be treated badly by male reception staff.
In my internet booking I had asked for a sunny quiet room as I wanted to spend time relaxing in the sun reading in the privacy of my balcony. I was given a small ground floor room in Block 1 facing the festive marquee about 70m away, sideways on to the beach , with a small 1metre terrace, which turned out to be directly on the main thoroughfare which most of the beach and building staff used to go to and fro. At the end of the day they all trooped past staring into the rooms, there were no net curtains for modesty. I felt very disinclined to sit on the terrace.
The room did not in any way resemble the room on the booking website. Squalid and tired would be accurate description. All the electrical wiring and sockets were in a poor state, with only one door on the wardrobe, grubby curtains, dirty fridge. As the bell boy was showing me to my room a German asked if he could view my room, as he considered his so bad he was leaving and going to find another hotel. I have stayed in many Egyptian hotels, and have to say this room was, for what I paid, the worst value for money.
The beach is enormous, clean, sandy, plenty of chaise longues and quiet places could be found to sunbath away from the loud pounding music. Beach boy Carlos ensured my towel was laid out each day, the table was within reach, and arranged a spare mattress to shelter me from the breeze and all with a smile. On the first day I was pestered by beach sales for tattoos, diving, horse ride, camel ride, wind surfing, hair dresser, pedicure and massage. I told them in Arabic in a polite but very firm way to go away and had no further hassle. I got struck on the head by a wayward kite sail!
The hotel appeared to be undergoing substantial renovation over 50% of the site, and throughout my stay, even on Christmas day, drilling, banging and sawing went on all day. Painters and stone workers laboured around the only heated pool.
The music was so loud in the marquee on Christmas Eve that my whole room shook and the metal windows rattled, and even after this finished just after midnight, the loud disco music from a bar close to the hotel was so bad that I decided at 2am to put the air conditioning on try to block out the noise. As I operated the switch, there was a loud bang and sparks shot out of the air conditioning unit filling my room with electrical fumes. I went to call help on the telephone only to have the entire wall socket disintergrate out of the wall in my hand and the phone inoperative. I ran to reception to get help, where upon 4 staff accompanied me to my room and agreed there was a strong electrical smell and proceeded to remove the false ceiling panels to investigate. 30 minutes later the maintenance staff completed their checks, but by then the room had acquired several mosquitos, and with still quite a strong electrical smell I was told everything was OK and I should go to sleep, which was now possible as the loud bar music had stopped.
On Christmas morning, I felt sick from inhaling burnt wires all night, stressed and depressed and had several mosquito bites. I had been woken up at 8am by the housekeeping’s normal cleaning schedule of moving all the furniture off the terrace outside the rooms to mop. The beach staff paraded down to the beach talking loudly on their mobile phones. I felt like I was in a nightmare. The Christmas day food was the same as all the other days.
By lunchtime, I could not endure the smell in my room any more and told reception I wanted to change rooms. The receptionist went to get the manager, who it seems was fully familiar with the events in my room and agreed to give me a new room. The new room (in Block 2) was massive, big bed, proper fixings, lamps that worked, rug on the floor, sunny terrace, in fact it looked just like the room on the website! And it was shielded by another block from the marquee and out of earshot of the loud bar and if it wasn’t for the loud Russians partying on the terrace two rooms along until 4.30am I am sure I would have had an excellent sleep.
This all inclusive hotel has obviously had better days. The food was generally very average (the highlight: the tomato soup at Boxing Day lunch) with very little recognizable meat at any of the meals during my stay. Alcoholic spirits seemed to be watered down and were served in plastic mugs.. No bottled water is supplied. The cakes and pastries were salty. Most of the guests are Russian/Polish and I think I was the only Brit.
How could my Christmas treat leave me feeling so stressed ? I couldn’t wait to check out. It was such a relief to get back into the noise and chaos of Hurghada.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
