Concorde el Salam Hotel Review

Overall Rating

Great food
Cheap as chips
Great Booze
Great facilities
Great staff
AMAZING Snorkeling

Russians are common in the hotel - They are loud, rude and are the the holidaying equivalent to moving next door to a family of Chavs who have just won the lottery - harmless but shamefully intolerable.
There is no real beach
Free drinks stop at 11pm
Waiters and bar men can be slow, but boy do they speed up after they've been tipped!

My girlfriend and I wanted some cheap winter sun in January so we decided to head to Sharm el Sheikh, Concorde el Salam. The hotel is situated in a quiet cove called Sharks bay with two other hotels. It is a short bus ride from Sharm el Sheik, which is nice but very touristy. Good for kids. Sharks Bay was much quieter with all amenities within the hotel grounds. We paid about £450 each all inclusive for a week so to be fair I wasn't expecting much. I was very pleasantly surprised. The hotel is large but not not a monolith. It is spread across a wide area punctuated by manuicured gardens and I think 4 swimming pools. We never tried the pools, or did we see anyone else in them; they were pristine but ice cold. I don't know why they were so cold because the air temperature was a lovely about 25C and the sea was about the same even late at night. The hotel itself was very clean, well kept and the staff fantastically helpful. Food was great, massive range and a good combination of buffet and cooked to order food from all over the world. There is also a lebanese restaraunt which was fantastic and a pool bar which served gerat burgers and kebabs. Drinks were great, local beer (bit like Grolsch) and spirits were all good. I only dared try the wine on the last day (6 days of beer from 9am and I had to have a change!). Surprisingly it was good. But alas only for cooking. The white was a lot better though.

Rooms were immaculate, airy and well serviced. Free movies for the kids and silent aircon. The minibar can be stocked at your request. They do charge for this but it works out at about £1 a drink.

Facilities are endless; running track, football pitch, basketball, tennis, squash, ice skating, horse riding (about £10), aqua gym resistance machines, full gymnasium, indoor pool, night club, shops, bank, blah blah blah. Everything but a cash point - there's one in the hotel next door, takes switch cards with no charge. Basically it has everything you need.

The best part of the hotel is not the building, it is the location. The reef meets the beach and 10-25m out you are it amazing snorkeling territory. We counted about 20 species of fish and they are there in there hundreds just meters from the beach. I say beach in the loosest sense. It's rock. It has been terraced well and is well equipped but there are no expanses of white sand. However go on a trip just 20 minutes away to the national park and you are on a beach that is 5 miles long, and you are there by yourself. If you do fancy any excursions I do recommend the Ras Mohammed National park and the quad bikes into the desert. The bikes are great but get good travel insuranes because they can be a bit hairy - but fantastic fun. We shared a bike and loved it, £25 for about 4 hours, fantastic value. Don't wear good clothes and do take a back pack with water, it is not provided and there is nowhere to get it.

To summarise then. The hotel staff are good, but great when tipped. Unfortunately there are a lot of Russians. I hate to make sweeping generalisations but on the whole they are a bunch of bad drunks and very bad dressers. They are also very rude to the staff. This is a good thing though because we found the staff loved the British holiday-makers as a result. Great food, cheap as chips, great booze, great facilities, good entertainment, great for kids, great staff, AMAZING snorkeling.

Is it 5*? No. I've been lucky enough to stay in some true 5* hotels; they have robes, exquisite food, wines, decor and a concierge that will take a bullet for you. Concorde El Salaam is not a Hilton or Raffles. It is "Egyptian 5*". It's a European 4* hotel with a LOT of facilities but if you are after 5* luxury then this hotel does not tick all the boxes. But it comes close. For me that was the only let down - it was sold as a 5* hotel. 5* hotels don't charge you US$10 for a bathroom. Concorde does. If it marketed itself as 4* I would literally not be able to find a single fault in this hotel.

Some tips for Egypt:

DO NOT GET ANY EGYPTIAN CASH IN THE UK!!! They will sell there mothers if the buyer paid in sterling. In the airport I baught fags (incidentally there is duty free on arrival for ciggys) they were £10 sterling, when I asked to pay in egyptian it worked out to be £15.
Do get GB£50 worth of Egyptian Pounds in small notes to use for tipping. Get used to it. Its common place in Egypt and not just for tourists. Little and often. About 10-50p for a waiter/barman or porter is fine. They will not be insulted if you don't tip but they do expect it. Do not tip more than this. There is a level of work ethic that Egyptians won't exceed no matter how much you tip.
Don't trust anyone. Sad but true. There is actually very little crime in Egypt. But, they are very good at adding extra charges or even trying to make you pay for visas that don't exist at the airport. Just say very firmly "No". You must look them in the eye. They soon back down and you find that they leave you alone very quickly.
Do not drink the water - very clean, no bugs, but very high mineral content.
Get your suncream here. The stuff there is useless.