hi im going to grand azure on thurs and got a few questions. Just wondering if salad safes to eat in the grand azure and other restaurants? How much should i tip approx? and also how far is the hotel from bars and restaurants? thankyou for any replies.

Hi Bexxp,
If we got good service we generally tipped no more than 20 EP which seemed adequate although we were never pressured for a tip at the hotel by any of the staff. Everyone is very friendly anyway and willing to help. We tended to sit in the same area of the restaurant so service was always good.
I've seen lots of comments regarding illness/food and just wanted to say only my wife had any problems which lasted one day during our two weeks at GA. The foods very good but I think you have to be sensible. My daughters never had ice in their drinks and if you have fried eggs/omelettes make sure they are turned over and well cooked. Leave them if not!!!
Hotrodder, We drank the white wine & rose at meal times and found it very good. Only available by the glass but they were always filled again very quickly.
Hope you all enjoy it as much as we did.

Hi stalyvegas
Did u upgrade? if so was it worth it, heard very mixed reports about it.
Going out on 11th with no worries whatsoever if it happens it happens.

Hi Oldham Beast,
Wish I was going back, ready for another holiday already.
We did'nt upgrade althogh we did ask but were ok in cluster 3. I would do next time because we liked it around the Waterfall pool and it was handy for most areas of the hotel except the beach. The bed/bathrooms were bigger with a seperate sitting area whereas we had just a couple of chairs in the alcove. But how long do you spend in the room. It was good to escape to heat though into the aircon room or into the main reception area/bar which is also aircond'd. There are also 3 -computers for internet in the recption which is 20 EP for 30mins or 30 EP for an hour available upto 11pm. It cost me a fortune paying for the kids on MSN messenger to their mates but what price peace while your having a drink. Have one for me. Cheers

You are supposed to book the shuttle bus the day before you want to travel butas long as you are not wanting to go at peak times we didn ot find aprobloem booking it the same day.

As for tipping, we actually found that all most of teh staff wanted was to be treated with respect. One of the guys in the VIP lounge got me thge powder they use to make up the childrens juice from as i wanted to add it to my water. It was not the easiest thing for him to do and he would not accept any money to say thank you.

Am sure you will all have a great haliday. Just say pleas and thank you and be respectful. They work long hours for not much money at all.

We're going in 2 weeks (boy oh boy).

How's the beach? Is it sand or coral/rocks? I saw a lot of photos from another member but I see nobody taking bath. Given the temperatures it's a bit odd nobody's in the water. What's the catch? Should we take some special rubber shoes with us? Should we need to walk all that platform to take a batth?

Thanks

Has any one seen the last Hotel report on the Hotel reviews page? Oh my God we go sunday and it does'nt sound good, any other comments from people who have just returned?

can anyone tell me if there is a towel service operating at the hotel for the pool and beach areas. i have been told at other hotels they give you clean towels every morning to take down to the pool.

5 days to go

Well a couple of hours to go, let U know what we think, see anyone there????????

Please do not post in phone text ie U instead of you thanks Briar

Hi Hotrodder,

Don't know if you will get this before you go, but if you do, have a great time. I have read this new report and yes it does put you off going. Its a shame that upset stomachs ruined there holiday and being admitted to hospital is awful. However, everyone is entitled to there own opinion and I guess if we would have been that sick we would have hated it too. We were lucky as we never once had cold or warm food, everything was hot and we never saw birds eat food, as I have mentioned previously, to us it was one of the cleanest hotels we have stayed in as all the food was covered up and the staff were contstantly checking it and they would make sure they rotated the stocks. I have been reading reports of other Sharm hotels and even the people staying at the top hotels have complained about stomach upsets and so its not just a hotel thing, but an egypt thing in a lot of cases.

Regards to hotel rating yes the tour operators should do something about it, but if hotels all the world were rated equally eg a hotel where all the stars go at £2000 a night or somethinggets a 5 star rating and this therefore a 2star would we infact go to it? If you get any brochure and look at a five star place in the same location and one costs a few hunded pounds more for B&B compared to the all inclusive place then obviously the B&B place must be of a much higher standard even if its rated the same. Maybe ratings should be abolished all together and just have the places rated by what people think.

Anyway guess I am going off topic.
To the question about suites, it all depends on how often you will use the executive lounge. If you could have any drink you wanted from any bar then I would say it was certainly worth it. However cos we had young kids we never used the executive lounge apart from breakfast so we didn't get our moneys worth. However, our main reason for upgrading was the extra room (no family rooms when we booked) it was great to have the room for our kids to play in while we got ready etc etc, rather than being squashed like sardines. However we didn't really use the sofa or the TV that much. What was great, was the location, step out of room and by the pool. Didn't have to carry loads of things around with us all the time, like we have had to on all our other holidays. We could just pop back and get what we wanted. great!. We were on the ground floor so no steps to walk up and quite a few if your on the top floor.
I think I have gone on enough, in the end a holiday is what you make it, what your expectations are compared to where else you have been and of course how much you paid.

Anyway try and enjoy, we certainly did.

Hi all

Returned on thursday from a fantasticv holiday. Room in cluster 2 on 3rd floor nice sea and pool view. Yes there was a hotel being built next door but you would never know it. Out of 7 of us 4 had upset tum but went strait to 24hr chemist clraeed within 12 hrs. One of us did have a repeat but not nasty did not spoil our holiday one bit.
Met up with skully spongebob and kaz on our last day they had t-shirts with there names on!!!
Food was great and the chinese and italian wrer our favouirits.
Only had one prob with service at the beach bar at lunch time can get very busy at peak times all other bars good service and cold drinks.
Loved the room where we were as it was by a nice quiet pool and close to the beach . The waterfalls pool very nice but as others have said you have to be up at the crack of dawn or else tip the pool boys very heavilly I might add as we saw this being done and they will get a bed for you.
Any questions will gladly answer.
As to the mystery of the tummy problem no one seems to have mentiones the fact that all watering of the grounds is done with recycled water wich some days looked brown and did not smell very pleasent, could this be the problem because once we dicovered this and avoided grass areas and kept away from any sprinklers we all seemed to be fine.

Marg

Glad you had a great time Marg.

Our baby would sleep on the grass as no parasols the first week and he was the only one of us who didn't have a tummy upset. My daughter spent ages the second week doing handstands on thegrass with other kids and was fine that week! So who knows what causes it. A bit of everything perhaps

just a quick message,not trying to worry anyone going..... we came back on 19th june from the lti grand azure, dont get me wrong a LOVELY holiday and would definately go back but my partner STILL has an upset stomach, and we have nearly been back a month!

i would suggest keeping away from ice and salad.

dont be put off though the hotel is amazing and you will have a lovely time.

Glove1

Hi all, arrived yesterday and yes it is fantasic, upgraded to a suite from stadard room because they are bigger if you have kids, $280 for 2 weeks. The rep says everone gets tummy trouble, its a way of life here, just visit the chemist and they give 2 sorts of tablets and it should go. Forget your home pils they block you up. We are in block 15 by main Laggon pool near reception and its fine , will post early next week when had a good look around

Nigel

Hi Nigel

Am really pleased to hear that you are all having a good time. Enjoy yourself, wish i was still there!

Ellie

Hi hotrodder,
glad to hear your having a good time so far. Whats the weather like now? When we were there it was 35 - 42 and very pleasant. $280 to upgrade for two weeks is really good, is that just for the suite or for the drinks package too.
Have a great time and look forward to your posting when you return.

Nicky

hi
only two days to go now
i am feeling al ot happier after reading latest review from nicolaw
i was getting a bit worried
glad to see hotrodder is enjoying it so far.
is there plenty of hangers in the rooms or should i put a couple in my case?
are towels provided for the beach?
cheers
john

Hi John,

Good to hear from you.
I would say that there are not that many hangers. We started to unpack and hang everything up, but this was too time consuming in the end and just put everything on the shelves. Just me being lazy as I didn't want to spend too much time indoors unpacking. yes you get towels for the pool / beach. you can hand them in each evening and get fresh ones, but again we always forgot to do this mainly because the towel hut was the other side of the pool. Our last day the towel guy noticed all the suntan lotion on our towels and went and got us some fresh ones, he also didn't hang around waiting for a tip which some staff did.

Oh cos we were on the ground floor we did have a load of ants in our bathroom one day from the baby crawling around with food no doubt, we found the hole they were coming from and used my hubbys shaving gel to block it. It worked wonders and we never saw an ant again.

Any other questions please feel free to ask, and I will do my best to answer as honestly as I can.

Cheers

Nicola

Hi everyone just three weeks to go Just wanted to know if the larger rooms are readily available or did you have to wait til one became vacant. Are the standard rooms big enough for 3 teenagers who dont Know what a wardrobe is? thanks Diana