Spent one week at Abo Nawas in Marsa Alam with my brother. We are aged 31 (me) and 23. The only negative thing in our stay was the presence of terrible mosquitos (only during the night) that made it impossible to sleep. The hotel provides a disinfestation service every evening before dinner, both outdoor (beaches, gardens, etc) than inside guests' rooms, but these very little mosquitos seem to be very strong :)
Their bite are not very annoying I must say, but when you sleep and you can hear their noise around your ears... that is terrible and makes you very nervous.
A part from this, no other complaint about the place, no other negative point in our stay.
The room are big enough, we also had a gecko in our room for a couple of days :) Rooms are clean. Not like in a Western 5 star hotel, but clean. That's it.
We stayed at the hotel in a period of "transition" from some tour operators to some others. We booked an ALL INCLUSIVE stay with Margot, which is a kind of "low cost" partner of Eden Viaggi. Because of this "transition" period, we did not have any entertainement activities or services (what in italy we call "animazione"), but since we were there with the aim to relax and enjoy the sea and the reef, we were really happy about that.
The hotel/restort is quite big, about 150-200 rooms, but during our week we were only about 50 people, which was wonderful from my point of view (but it depends on what you are looking for, and I want to underline that it was probaly just that week, also because many tourists had to cancel flights because of the Volcano in Iceland).
Again, the resort has 3 restaurants I think, but during that week only one was open (maybe because we were really not a lot, and it was not worth to have more than one restaurant open). Some guests were complaining about that, which is understandable from my point of view, but the quality of the food was good so it was not a problem for us.
They also have an Italian chef making pasta every day for those who cannot live without :)
Breakfast is vey rich in "Arabic" sweets, made of honey. Negative aspect: not a lot of fruits during our stay, only bananas and sometimes green melon.
What else? The resort is directly on the beach, but to reach the reef you have to walk about 450 mt on a pontoon. This could be quite annoying if you are a lazy person. Moreover, once you have walked this distance, the water height (after the reef I mean) is about 10 meters. So it is not suggested if you cannot swim.
The reef is amazing here, it is not necessary to book visits to other sites because you can find every kind of fishes, and even turtles!
If you have small children they can play in water with no worries, at beach the level is never deeper than 30 cm. Another good solution may be the swimming pool, which is always perfectly cleaned, and you have different swimming pools with different water levels.
The working personnel (both in rooms, restaurants, gardens) is 100% Egyptian (men, because women do not work).
They are usually very kind and nice, sometimes trying to get more money than they should, but always in a "polite" way.
We had a room cleaner which made wonderful "scultures" with bath- and hand towels... really amazing. We gave him some extra tips for this, but honestly he did not ask for that.
For any further info, or if you have any questions, I will be glad to help you.
I attach some pictures we made, just to give you an idea.
Claudia
- Abou Nawas Marsa Alam
- Hotel Abou Nawas
