REVIEW OF GRAND RESORT HURGHADA "TOXIC OASIS FOR FAT GERMANS"
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 by 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 rubbing 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. 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
shop keepers 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's 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 early
hours of morning. Hotel manager said he has no control over the DJ's.
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 were
advised were 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 butt if you read Tripadvisor.com's
1* and 2* reviews you see there are many people who had 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 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 can not 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 dim light every night.
The reception desk is way too small for handling the large crowds and such a big hotel.
HARASSMENT ---------------------- Shop
keepers constantly harassed us. Just walking straight they come and
stand on 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 come 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.
Worst vacation I ever had. Strongly dis-recommended.
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