Hi Welshoney and Amandajgee,

I think you need to read between the lines of most reviews of hotels in Tunisia and then it becomes clearer why the Sahara Beach, and in fact Tunisia in general, seems to receive such conflicting reviews. The Sahara Beach wouldn't be for me - it's too big, too busy, too orientated towards people who are looking for a highly organised programme of entertainment and I don't like the all-inclusive concept. I much prefer a smaller, quieter hotel with few children and zero teenagers if possible - not because I don't like them, it's just that the nature of my work means that I like some respite from other people's children and esepcially teenagers when on my holidays :-) So I hope you can see that the very thing that makes it my idea of holiday hell makes it the perfect choice for many others, especially those with children for whom the organised activities must be a godsend.

Also, a hotel kitchen which has to cope with providing up to 1,800 covers 3 times a day in the high season is never going to be able to produce anything other than mass catering-style food and there really is no point in going expecting gourmet cuisine to emerge from the kitchens at the Sahara Beach. But clearly some people do and hence the complaints about the quality of the food. Whereas others I suspect realise that the most you can expect is food that is safe to eat and OK but not necessarily any better and enough choice to mean that there will always be at least one dish on offer that you like and hence aren't disappointed to find that that is exactly what they get.

Similarly, anybody expecting a tourist industry and resorts which are geared up to the needs of the British holidaymaker who wants things as close to what they get at home as possible but with guaranteed sunshine will be disappointed too. Many resorts in Spain and the Canaries have made a good living doing just that but it's not been the Tunisian way. Tunisia, despite the French influence, is not European and some people find the cultural differences just too great. Again, the very things that I find attractive about Tunisia, especially the fact that it is so different from home, is what makes it the worst possible destination for many people.

So on the whole, I think that I've learnt that you have to ignore the opinions expressed in many reviews and simply concentrate on the facts contained within them. It was actually the rave reviews that the Sahara Beach has received from some people that convinced me it was never going to be the hotel for me because the things they really liked about it were exactly what I wasn't looking for. Similarly, I'm sure that others have read my comments on eg the Royal Miramar Thalassa (which I liked very much!) and thought 'Dear god, what a dead dump that sounds like'. It's horses for courses and I suspect that the Sahara Beach does what it does very well and that the people who don't like it and are highly critical of it are actually looking for a different sort of holiday than can ever be provided by a very large, all-inclusive 3/4* hotel that is geared up to providing for the family market at a very reasonable price. Whereas those who go with realistic expectations of what you can expect from a large mass market hotel often find their expectations exceeded and will come back raving about it.

It sounds to me that you are both going with an open mind and determined to make the best of your holidays and I think that that is the only way to approach it. And if you don't like the Sahara Hotel experience but do like Tunisia, well please don't let that put you of going back and trying another hotel and another town at another time. Tunisia is a great place for a different sort of holiday that is quite unlike the Spanish Costas experience and has a great range of hotels that are geared up to a range of different expectations of what makes for a great hotel.

SM