By Reza Ganjavi
TOXIC SPRAY
This hotel should be called a toxic resort because they fumigate the place every day and spray for bugs and insects in the morning and at night, by hand, with motorized mobile units, and built-in toxic spray units. They say it won't kill humans but it is chemicals that are in the air and if it kills any creature I don't think it's good for our health. They even spray the restaurant heavily. Can you imagine?
The tour operator denies this saying it was only done late evening. They are lying because we see it done at 7 pm as well as in the morning.
NO CONCEPT OF HYGIENE
The hotel has no concept of hygiene. I heard of groups of people who got sick eating the food there. We just avoided the food there and made our own though we paid for it. If you go without vaccination you're asking for trouble. The clean plates were filthy -- had left-over food crumbs on them. We examined many plates and bowls from the clean stack and they were all filthy. One restaurant manager said the rotor people don't do a good job. We also heard that the restaurant people are treated badly by management so they don’t care. We heard waiters were seen sticking their finger in food tasting it & grabbing a small bite and when asked for clean cutlery staff rubbed their hands up & down the cutlery to clean it.
The restaurant manager admitted the dirt dish problem but, of course, the hotel management and the tour operator, ETI in Germany (Express Travel International), which I heard belongs to the Egyptian family who owns the hotel and sold us the package through trip.de completely denies this.
NO HOT WATER
ETI also denies the fact that we did not have hot water. If you read the 1* reviews on Tripadvisor you see other people didn't have hot water either. The same story as ours: many people come to try to fix it but they can't. And ETI says nobody else complained!! They're in denial I guess so it will never improve.
WOMEN BEWARE OF ATTACKERS
The hotel must have known the problem of security of these flipping vicious shopkeepers outside the hotel would attack European women but they gave us no warnings. The hotel manager later said, yes, they go to jail, and get out and do it again, so he must have known, but it was too late, because the only time my partner went for a walk alone she got attacked and sexually abused by a shop keeper who dragged her in his shop, groped her, touched her sensitive parts, kissed her, until she managed to run away. The police arrested him -- imagine the hell we went through dealing with police -- and then we go to the courthouse the next day which is dirty as toilette and the prosecutor, a young guy smoking cigarettes, gets a kick out of hearing her explain this adventure again and again and wants more and more detail which clearly seemed he was getting a kick out of it, and then two lawyers try to rip us off (luckily we didn't give them any money) but thankfully the embassy is pursuing the case. That by itself is enough to ruin a trip, and the hotel should have warned us.
EXTREMELY NOISY
We asked for a quiet room when we booked and they said it was possible. Forget it. They changed our room but there is always music pounding at the pools, even at pools they tell you there is no music, there is, and construction noise, and so on. The speakers are on top of the restaurant and blast at the rooms. The violinist and sax player were torturous as they had poor intonation. The disco blasts till the early hours of the morning. The hotel manager said he has no control over the DJs. Unbelievable.
All the events put on by the hotel at night were way way too loud.
MANAGEMENT IN DENIAL
Express Travel International GmbH pretty much completely denied everything. They apologized but that was not enough. We managed to get a few dollars from them to avoid litigation which we tried to avoid but we were advised was possible to do, and we would have won. ETI denied the dirty dished. We could have summoned the restaurant manager to appear here in Europe and have him say under oath if what we quote him is true or not. We didn't feel like fighting because these people are so clueless. Just avoid dealing with ETI and never go to this hotel.
Their response to the sexual attack was that it is part of that culture. That is a severe insult to the great Egyptian culture and is utterly false. There are criminals in any country. ETI and the hotel had the responsibility to warn their customers since they knew this kind of thing does happen; we did not know.
They told us that their other customers are happy and made us feel like we were the only ones who had these issues but if you read Tripadvisor.com's 1* and 2* reviews you see there are many people who had a similar experience as ours. We were lucky not to get sick. Dealing with ETI and trip.de was like pulling teeth.
The hotel was full of Germans and many of them were very overweight. And they seemed to love the place, and the buffets -- nonstop sweets and disgusting food they piled in their bellies and lied in the Egyptian sun -- would they ever complain about dirty dishes?
NO SYMPATHY FOR VEGETARIANS
We were told by the travel agent that food is available for vegetarians. We were told several dishes were vegetarian but they ended up having meat in them (disgusting for a vegetarian), so they cannot be trusted.
NO SECURITY
Our door lock was broken but this cheap hotel just ignores it. I'm sure it was reported by others too. The key card reader was malfunctioning too.
MISSING ESSENTIALS
We had our own food but when asked for some basic things like honey we got the answer, the entire resort has no honey. Great!
The orange juice they provide is colored sugar. If you want OJ, you have to pay a lot for it.
The olive oil is the cheapest quality. Nothing about this hotel is the 5-star it claims to be.
The entire resort didn't have any light bulbs over 25 watts so we lived in dim light every night.
The reception desk is way too small for handling the large crowds and such a big hotel.
HARASSMENT
Shopkeepers constantly harassed us. Just walking straight they come and stand in your way to talk you into going to their shop. I almost kicked and punched the suckers but luckily it didn't get that far.
CARELESS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
At night when the tour buses came they all park for a long time in front of the hotel with their engines ON for a long time. This pollutes the air, warms the environment, wastes energy, and is bad for our health.
WHERE'S THE BEACH?
The beach area of the hotel is tiny and crammed totally with beds. The water is polluted so don't think about going in the sea. And the air is polluted by heavy traffic.
The worst vacation I ever had. Strongly dis-recommended.