Quick Summary:
The hotel is pleasant, grounds well looked after, lots of pools to choose from and the rooms are more than adequate.
The animation team were great, and our daughter LOVED the kiddie disco every night. The animation team were also customer service reps, and regularly coming round to check on things and take feedback or help address any problems. I do cover some problems or issues we did have below – but in general they weren’t worth raising there and some were pretty obvious and shouldn’t need raising. But again – the animation team was one of the biggest positives of the hotel.
Food from the buffet area is ok, but it is also VERY hectic and getting a table at lunchtimes or breakfast can be a challenge. They also had the Mexican restaurant doing breakfast – but similar situation there and I’ve got more details on that down below if you want to know more. Each night (apart from the first) we ate in the ala carte restaurants – which is good as I think we’d have gone mad having the buffet and its challenges every day. At lunch times we generally went to T-Bones where they had some burgers + other bits and a pizza bar which was great.
So overall – we’d think about going back if we got a really good deal, but unfortunately I’ve a feeling Egypt doesn’t agree with my stomach and I was ill for most of the holiday. Thankfully only a couple of days where I was too ill to do anything, but not feeling well for 12 days wasn’t fun, and neither was the £100 spent on medication, then docs then more medication. But I won’t put that blame on the hotel as the rest of the family were fine. The hotel could easily take a small step up in a few areas that would significantly enhance the experience.
As others state there are Russians there and at times we wondered if there were any other nationalities. But I will point out we met a great couple at the family pool (outside block 35) who were sharing food/snacks and although their English was not good they really made an effort. They were really nice.
The airport is hell, but this is Egypt, unfortunately it can really ruin the start of your holiday if you get there and it’s busy!
Our first week was quiet, and was great because of it. The 2nd week was VERY busy and it really amplified the bad points of the hotel.
The onsite pharmacy is a complete rip off. When pointing this out on another site for the hotel. I had it repeatedly pointed out that there are other pharmacies you can go to, also the Senzo mall. Yes try going to those when you’re extremely il! The hotel really needs to sort out its onsite shops/services as this wasn’t acceptable.
The Detail!
Now I’m not sure right now what star rating the hotel is, for us . . we’d probably rate it at 3 star, but not the 4-5 star it can be sold as. With some minor changes this could easily become a 4 star – and give you that good comfy feeling you’d expect with a hotel at that true rating. At time we DID see that level of service and quality – but it was far from consistent. Again this is from my perspective, we’ve stayed at true 5 star hotels and also at 2 star hotels in the past. So you generally do get what you pay for. . but again. . some small changes would make this a much more pleasant stay and give it the 4 star feel.