Отель контрастов, или Отдых только для арабов Hotel of contrasts, or Rest only for Arabs

We chose the hotel based on positive reviews before the quarantine and missed the mark. . . We rested at the end of August, went during this period to celebrate my husband's birthday on a seashore under palm trees. We arrived at the hotel at 12.30, our bus was met with local colorful music and dancing (we were pleasantly surprised), as it turned out, 4 buses with Arabs were supposed to arrive that day and the holiday was for them, and we just squeezed in there. Arriving vacationers were kindly handed out questionnaires and placed in the lobby to fill them out, then they offered to go to the bar without bracelets, drink soft non-alcoholic drinks and wait there for 10-15 minutes. In 20 minutes. put on bracelets and offered to go out to dinner.
After lunch from 14.30 to 15.00 we were waiting for the settlement. At 15.00 we were finally given a room for a present in the new wing overlooking the pool (lucky the first time). The new wing is 1 (some of the windows overlook the pool, all the rooms have a sea view, and some overlook the "garden" - the unfinished hotel), the numbers start at 1, the next digit is the floor and two digits is the room number. Old wing - 2, some of the rooms overlook the pool, and some of the water park. Wing No. 3 does not function at all, prepared for repair.
The room came with new furniture, a large TV, refrigerator, kettle, hair dryer, safe, relatively clean, everything worked properly. From cosmetics there were only shower gel and shampoo (replenished as needed), there was no soap at all. Every day, when cleaning, water was replenished (1.5 liters per person), tea, coffee, sugar, and, if necessary, toilet paper. The bed is old in spools, the towels are relatively new. There were no beach towels in the room at check-in and there was one bath towel and a foot towel for two. We ran after everyone for another hour to give at least towels for the beach... then they were impudently torn from the cleaner (old and faded), hidden on a cart and went to the beach. After we came back from the beach, the sets of bath towels were already on the shelves.

The beach is huge, up to 300 m long, with seven rows of sunbeds. At any time, you could lie down on the first line. The sun loungers are old, white paint is peeling on metal and wood, the mattresses are good, but there are few of them. Umbrellas are small, partly untwisted, give shade poorly. The beach is dirty, in the sand: stones, shells, glass, sticks, no one sifts the sand. Entering the sea without coral is IMPOSSIBLE!! ! Many acquaintances were cut on the stones and shells of the leg. About a meter when entering the sea - sand with small pebbles, and then prickly cracked rocky formations covered with silt up to 10 m long, then sand with stones, corals and sea urchins. On the beach, if you go to the right, there is an exposition of the sunken city - columns with images of faces covered with corals, slabs, an old iron structure in which fish huddle.
Before the buoys around the perimeter of the sea there are small coral patches with fish. FOR THOSE WHO SWIMMING AND SNORKLING - go left, to the end of the beach and swim towards the island and you will be happy - coral gardens and more than 20 sections of different sizes of cral reefs that you can swim over, absolutely alive, colorful, with many fish, really big ones are afraid of people and immediately hide. We saw moray eels, various types of stingrays, even a huge spotted eagle, turtles, fish: unicorns, parrots, bodyfish of various types, various colors of butterflies, clowns in sea anemones, pufferfish, lionfish, triggerfish, surgeons and many small fish.
Regarding the rest in the summer, it is very hot from 10.00 to 15.30. On the beach is impossible, the sand is hot. On the plus side - very warm water even at 6 am, in the afternoon the top balls of the sea are just hot. You can stay on the beach even after sunset, but without swimming in the sea. The hotel is ideally located for the summer, it takes only 2-3 minutes to go to the beach from the restaurant and buildings in the heat.
The restaurant is large, consists of two halls, large and small, part of the food is given out in one hall (hot), part in the other (fruits, vegetables, salads, sauces and sweets), in the evening part of the food was cooked on the street, which is very inconvenient, run around the halls and stand in line everywhere. The food is served by the cooks, they are wearing masks and gloves, the cleaners are partly wearing masks, partly not at all. The range of food is small, standard for Egypt, they cooked mostly delicious (if not burnt), there were even edible soups and an analogue of borscht, for lunch there was always beef or meatballs, chicken, fish, for dinner they added grilled, boiled pork from beef, fried tuna, squid, mackerel, chicken. Vegetables and fruits are sliced ​ ​ and not always fresh, sometimes with sand, sometimes already sour. For lunch and dinner they made fresh salads with all kinds of vegetables. The side dishes were couscous, all kinds of rice, pasta and potatoes. Sweets are not a feature of the hotel, once in 8 days there were oriental sweets for dinner, the rest of the time biscuits with an incomprehensible cream (we tried it once and didn’t want to anymore).

The management of the hotel is marvelous, during the settlement they emphasized that my husband's birthday is the next day, the travel agent wrote about this in a letter to the hotel when buying a tour and again on the birthday itself. In the DR, we signed up in an Italian restaurant, noted well (there is nothing special about the food), two birthday people congratulated us with songs to national instruments and small cakes, no one congratulated my husband... it was very unpleasant. The next day, the travel agent clarified whether the husband was congratulated at the hotel? I found out that I was not congratulated, was very disappointed and wrote another angry letter to the hotel to apologize to the guest. But no one ever apologized... very selective attention and, probably, for money.
The hotel at the beginning of our holiday was 10% Europeans (Serbs, some Germans and Italians), 10% Ukrainians and Belarusians and 80% Arabs. Day 4 everyone got along peacefully, it was colorful, no one bothered each other. Then the contingent of Arabs changed, the Slavs remained up to 5% and chaos began. The local population was allowed to take food from the restaurant to their room (for the first time I see this in Egypt) and they took it out in huge plates, malnourished people were everywhere: on floors, on sun loungers, parapets, lawns. The elevators became dirty, there were leftovers, gloves, napkins, disposable cups, straws. Poor cleaners did not have time to clean it all. In the main restaurant, there were queues everywhere, Arab women and their children brazenly intermeddle in front of the Slavs and gathered mountains of food. Several families sat at the same table, took away chairs everywhere, set food in three tiers, ate, as if for the last time, what they could not finish eating, put it on plates and took it away with them when they ate it remained a mystery, since the hotel had constant snacks (french fries, burgers, vegetables) and ice cream (on the 5th day of rest, the machine broke down and there was no ice cream).
In the evenings there was the usual entertainment program, first for children, then for adults (belly dancing, Miss and Mr. hotel, tanura (dance of skirts), all kinds of concerts. We did not participate in the animation, the animators on the beach invited to play football, darts, volleyball. Pools a lot for both adults and children. A good water park (for children of all ages and adults. There is a hookah bar on site. The hotel area is beautiful, already decaying in greenery and flowers, there are many palm trees and ornamental trees. Sanitizers hang around the hotel, on bars, in buildings, but unfortunately they are empty, full only in the lobby, sometimes in the restaurant.
The staff is mostly good. The cleaner Mahmut, for small rewards, made masterpieces from towels every day, replenished everything on time, washed the floors, it was clean from the whole hotel only in the room, where we returned with pleasure. Bartenders, cooks at the distribution are mostly smiling, joking, but there were also unpleasant ones. At the distribution of fruit in the evenings there was a nasty full cook, on his shift there were sour melon and watermelon, which he served to the Slavs, he got everything fresh from the lower table to his compatriots. When I tried to explain to him that it was impossible to do this, except for Arabic, he forgot all languages ​ ​... On the day of departure, after 12 noon, bracelets are cut off exclusively from men.

If we had not rested in quarantine, given the advantages of the hotel, the rest would have turned out, probably, unforgettable. But given all the negatives, I can not recommend the hotel. This is the first hotel in Egypt, from which they left with pleasure. We will miss the sea, for the beloved staff, but not for the hotel. The management did a good job of destroying the level of the hotel, BRAVO!