There were two couples travelling on our holiday.

This is not a five star hotel. When we first arrived we were blown away with the size of the place- it is huge and is very nicely decorated throughout. However, the reason the hotel is not five star is because of the food and staff/service.

The food is disgusting- it was hardly ever warm and was not not prepared properly. On one particular occasion one chef handled raw and cooked meat and with the same unwashed hand gave me a plate of chips. The food was left out for very long periods of time and it was common to see birds pecking at the food lying out. As a result the four of us had severe stomach upsets for two whole weeks (I had to visit the doctor) and were continously running to the toilet throughout the day. You would maybe expect a stomach upset for a few days on holiday but not for fourteen. My boyfriend was admitted to hospital the minute we got home with severe food poisoning and was kept in for two days. This is not what you expect when you book a five star hotel and we were all very dissapointed. I would recommend that you do not go to this hotel for your health's sake.

The staff in the hotel were only helpful after you gave them a tip and this was the same in all the bars and restaurants. The reception staff were even worse and gave the impression they did not care about your problems or concerns. We have never experienced anything like this before, it was very frustrating.

When reading other comments and reviews I get really confused because there is no way we would recommend or want to return to this hotel. There is no way that we were the only people who were ill at this hotel. I just hope that the travel agents change the star rating because we expected much more from this hotel than we got. I would consider changing your holiday if you have booked.

Just came back from staying at the Grand Azure and wanted to say it was absolutely fantastic. If you need a break in a tropical paradise then this is the place to go.

The hotel grounds are stunning, a walk along the jetty to see the fish is priceless and the scenery breathtaking.

Our room was like an apartment! And well maintained, the sheets are changed daily, who ever said men can

Myself and partner are hoping to go back to the Grand Azure for the second year running and whilst on-line, I stumbled accross this website and could not believe some of the reviews!

If you are planning a trip here, do not worry about a thing. Its absolutly amazing! 5 Star all the way. As soon as you walk into reception you will be gobsmacked, its like a palace, and the "wow" factor continues after seeing the pools, rooms, beach, restaurants, food and great service.

The staff are so friendly and a smile goes a long way. They love the English and the service was faultless.

I got a tummy bug but my partner didn't and we ate the same. I put mine down to sun-stroke and de-hydration. All Inclusive is fantastic but too much alcohol (which was my mistake) is not good in 40 degree heat.

My advice is drink water throughout the day, take a packet of Imodium (just in case) and ignore the bad reports and look forward to your holiday...... we will be!

We arrived at the hotel and were very pleased with the lobby area and first impressions were good, however when we arrived at at the room we had been allocated we were very disappointed, the room was backing onto a building site, we feared the worst ie: early morning noise etc.

I decided that this was not good enough and went back to the reception and complained, I got a very frosty reception(despite the heat), when I pointed out that I had e-mailed the hotel prior to our visit telling that I was proposing to my girlfriend on the flight over and shown the mail that I had received back from them stating that they would make our visit very special and there would be a bottle of wine and fruit in our room on arrival(we are still waiting for these items)the tone of the receptionist changed slighty, he found us another room which was a little bit further away from the building work.

The room was clean and tidy but when we checked the minibar we found that it was empty? Also there was no milk or bottled water to make tea or coffee, I rang the reception and they assured me that this would be dealt with, I also told the Thomas Cook representative Dale about the above and he also said that it would be dealt with, however this never happened no matter how many times we asked.

We had to take an empty bottle to the bar and fill it up with milk(this was frowned upon) this was supposed to be all inclusive?.

I must at this stage point out that the staff at the hotel were only helpful if you were tipping them all the time, also the Thomas Cook rep was a waste of time and his answer to everything was "well thats the way it is in Egypt", taking this into account I do not think we would travel with Thomas cook again or use this hotel again.

We were always waiting for drinks and if we went to the bar they would take our order and ask us to sit down but the drinks very rarely arrived and we had to reorder again, there was no chance of getting even tipsy in this hotel, also they were always running out of glass's?.

The food in the hotel was quite good if you were lucky enough to find a table that had been set, the service in this hotel is disgusting.

We booked the free shuttle bus to the shopping centre, we waited in reception for the bus but it never arrived, nobody advised us what the delay was/ as usual we had to enquire otherwise we would have been sat there until the following morning, we rebooked for the following day, this time the bus was on time, however before we arrived at the bus stop we were told by the driver that if we gave him 5 egypt pounds each he would take us further into the resort centre, this was as usual a con as he only took us to the turning point he would have had to use anyway, it seemed that the only way you could obtain any type of reasonable service from this hotel was by tipping everyone even to get the service that we had already paid Thomas Cook for.

Now lets move onto the reason we went to this hotel/resort...of course the Red Sea and diving etc, we all got our snorkeling gear and attempted to go along the jetty but surprise surprise it was closed ? How do we snorkel? We were told by the rep that if we were caught damaging or picking up the coral we could get arrested, so the question was how could get to the snorkel area without damaging the coral as none of us could walk on water, again the hotel and thomas cook had let us down and our dreams had been shattered, I believe that they are still repairing the jetty.

Having spoken to the rep and again getting the same response "well thats the way it is in Egypt" we deciding to book a snorkeling trip which was a waste of time( one man nearly drowned and they had no idea how to rescue him), lucky for him there were people on the trip who helped as the crew were useless.

To recap we will be writing to Thomas Cook and advising them of the above but I am sure that we will not receive a satisfactory response it will more than likely be "thats the way it is in Egypt" but we know that it wasn't as we had glowing reports from other holiday makers who were in other hotels.

We also stayed at the LTI Grand Azure.

Our first impressions was wow. The reception was beautiful. We dined in the Chinese, Italian and oriental restuarants. The latter one not being so impressive. The Marakesh restuarant was good. The service was excellent. Yes things were a little slow, but the staff work so hard and soon put things right. The Tropicana restuarant did the most lovely pizza. I think it was the fish restuarant that gave us an upset tummy, but that was a minor detail and did not detract from our holiday.

The Room we stayed in was lovely. We also stayed in cluster 2 on the third floor. We were a little disappointed that the mini bar was not stocked up with water, milk etc. Perhaps a tip would have changed this, but the staff were happy to give us bottled water and milk at night. We laughed when we got back one day to find they had left us no towels. We rang housekeeping who said they would send some down. So I went and had a shower assuming they would appear soon and of course they did not arrive. We ended up ring reception when we got back late in the evening and within minutes they arrived with fresh towels.(It was so hot I dryed of naturally). We saw no need to tip everyone on our first day or days after that. We tipped the cleaner right at the end.

The Hotel location was a bit far out. My husband does like to wander around the town, but it made us more lazy and relaxed. The bus into town was great but in high season I should imagine it gets really packed and limited availabilty.

We would have liked to have seen more entertainment in the Terrace Bar. We noticed a lot of people sat in the Terrace Bar early evening and stayed there all night long. Few moved to the amphitheatre where the shows were staged. These are just minor details. We would definately stay again.

Everyone has different views on their holiday and what siuts one may not siut another and vice versa. Therefore our comments will vary.

This hotel is very impressive. The lobby area is large and spacious with shops,bar and all the a'la carte restaurants. It is spotless every where around the hotel and you will always see staff cleaning, gardening,moping etc.

We found the staff very helpful, tipping did help though but they were very happy with as little as

Hotel is very impressive.

Hotel itself is definately a 5 star rating and is as good as any 5 star hotel in the Carribean.

Swimming pools are great, the main pool is a laggon style pool with many bridges, and a swim up bar. Beach is pretty poor, jetty was broke and its a 20 min walk to the end of the jetty.

Rooms are of a good standard we booked a suite room, mini bar stocked everyday, and cleaned everyday and sheets towels changed daily.

All staff are very helpful, they dont excpect to be tipped. Food is okay wouldnt class this 5 star Italian is very good, but main buffet restaurant hasnt much choice.

Weather is very hot 45 degrees every day, in July/August this rises to 55/60. Namma Bay is worth a visit but go in the evening as its even hotter there, we visited the Hard Rock cafe for drinks and food well worth a visit, and its airconditioned.

As for tummy bugs yes you do get them we both had them everyone you talk to has them. You have to get tablets from the chemist across the road, cost approx

LTI Grand Azure looks like a 5* hotel!!! The grounds and the pools are stunning and are well mantained. The family rooms have two rooms and are large and are cleaned daily, but quite a few times there was never enough bath towels left for us.

As we got nearer to the end of the holiday the room service got poorer. The food was only luke warm most of the time and my husband was taken really ill with food poisoning and had to have injections, he was also ill when we returned to the UK. My daughter and myself were also ill with upset stomachs most of the holidays. Having said that the staff were really friendly and loved making a fuss of my 1 year old grandaughter.

The hygiene was very poor around the pool bars as they never cleaned the drinking glasses properly.

We have just returned from the LTI Grand Azure. Weather was fantastic, location great as we don't like to be in main town areas, hotel grounds, pools, reception area were all 5 star, however this is where the 5 star status ended.

The rooms were o.k. and kept extremely clean although on a couple of occassions we had to remind them that there were 3 in the room as they had left only 2 towels. The first instant was the night we arrived and we all obviously wanted to take a shower. The third towel didn't arrive until the following day so my daughter and I had to share one that evening. On subsequent occassions, it was dealt with fairly quickly (a tip for the cleaner helps!).

The bathroom was in need of refurbishment though. The food was edible but definitely not 5 star quality. Even though we were careful what we ate, we all had regular upset stomachs.

The service in the main restaurant was slow with dirty table cloths left on from previous sittings, dirty items not being cleared from the table, cutlery and napkins/serviettes missing etc.

This, I believe is more to do with bad organisation/management of the restaurant areas than the staff not doing their jobs. Most of the waiters were lovely, very friendly and looked after you and a few just completely ignored you. Again, tipping helps - a lot!

And this is the point that I must take issue with. We have stayed in all inclusive 3, 4 and 5 star hotels in the Indian Ocean, Latin America and the Caribbean and have never been advised or required to tip the staff.

Obviously we have at the end of the holiday i.e. cleaners and waiters that did a great job, but in Egypt (and not just this hotel - absolutely everywhere) tipping is necessary to get any sort of service and it was just generally annoying.

I guess I just wasn't expecting this in a supposedly 5 star hotel. The fault lies with the travel companies who have obviously rated the hotels according to Egyptian standards and not worldwide standards.
We tried 3 of the a la carte restaurants and they were all pretty grim (the Italian was probably the best).

All the pools are fantastic - very cold, which is lovely when the weather is so hot. We did have to get up really early to get a sundbed with umbrella though as by 8.00am all the beds with shade were gone (and around the main pool and sports pool it was more like 7.30am).

Everywhere was kept spotlessly clean and tidy and the pool staff were also really friendly. The place was packed with Russians, but we didn't have any problems. We just enjoyed people watching as they certainly have a different way of going about things.

We flew to Cairo for the day which was worth the money and effort. Do NOT do the dolphins. I had read other comments like this but without an explanation, so I will add this : if you want to stand in a pool for 1/2 an hour with a dolphin, swim 10 metres away for the poor thing to drag you back to the side, then fine. But the pool was dirty, the trainers couldn't speak a word of English and the dolphins just stayed in one place and all you could do was stroke them.
It was all incredibly boring and a complete waste of money!

A note about reception staff : My husband lost his mobile phone during our second week and they were incredibly unhelpful. We couldn't get an outside line on our room phone and they wouldn't connect us, so my husband had to walk to reception (we were situated at the beach end) for them to tell him that they couldn't get a line out either!
It was either lost in the reception area or on the shuttle bus to Naama Bay (which is worth a visit). Needless to say it was never handed in!

Also, when we came to pay, they couldn't take Visa or any cards as there was something wrong with their credit card machine - very helpful if you haven't got any cash! When we handed in our keys etc. the reception staff didn't say "thankyou for staying with us" or "did you enjoy your stay?". No customer relations at all.

To sum up our holiday, it was nice - certainly not 5 star, but the staff, weather and overall resort rescued it from being a very big disappointment. Also, something to bear in mind is that the staff work on average a 12 hour day (the waiters more as they all do breakfast, lunch and dinner), 7 days a week for 4 weeks and then they get a week or 10 days off to go home to Cairo and all this for very little money.

I also believe you get what you pay for and this holiday was incredibly cheap compared to the equivalent rating in other parts of the world. Again, I think the travel companies should look again at their rating system or make it clear that this is not a worldwide rating, just an Egyptian one. I can say that I've been there, seen it, done it but wouldn't rush back.

This hotel is fantastic.

The rooms are cleaned thoroughly every day (beds away from walls etc) bedding, towels are all changed we were often given twice as many towels and robes as were needed, nice for wrapping your hair up whilst you sorted yourself out.

The food at the hotel is great I have to say there were five of us and none of us became ill whilst on this holiday. With temperatures of 40 degrees its easy to mistake sun stroke with food poisoning. Drink plenty of water and you will be fine.

Obviously you have to be realistic and look at what you paid for this holiday at about