Осторожно - жулики Beware - scammers

Caution - here they cheat and extort!
Recently (7.11) returned from this "hotel". I fully agree with previous reviews, but with significant additions. People quite rightly minimized contact with hotel staff and services. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in doing this, as a result, we got tired of communicating with the roguish hotel staff and "engaged" representatives of Anex Tour. I have been going to Egypt for the thirteenth year with my family, as a rule, twice a year, and have been associated with the tourist business for about ten years. I know very well the hotels of Dahab in the lagoon and Le Meridien. All of them leave a more or less pleasant impression. Against their background, Mercure looks like a "black sheep".
At the first meeting I was struck by the reception management. No napkins, cocktail, hibiscus for you. Air conditioners do not work - closeness. Baksheesh is a common thing in Egypt, but for the first time I saw the manager of a five-star hotel, referring to the difficulties of settling (we had a company of three families), eagerly looking into my wallet. Further more. The porter at this "super hotel" is in the singular, there are no means of mechanization, and this despite the fact that the terrain is very difficult (steep mountain). No wonder that the angry porter broke one of the suitcases, tearing the handle out of it with meat, and it took about an hour to wait for the luggage to change clothes.

We didn't expect much from the food. It has long been considered that a bottle of wine plus tea, coffee, cola at dinner cost more than a chic dinner in an excellent Dahab fish restaurant with the same bottle of wine bought four to five times cheaper in a store. But even here Mercure managed to surprise. At breakfast - dirty napkins with crumbs, scanty greens, fruit purely from cans. Even vegetable oil (I'm not talking about olive oil) is in great short supply here - one lonely, always empty 100 gram jar for the entire restaurant. Dinner is even worse. In the worst traditions of public catering - salted and peppered dishes, tough, conditionally edible meat - an old dirty trick designed to make the client pay for unreasonably expensive drinks. At the same time, I saw for the first time that any sauces were completely absent at dinner. A similar disgrace with beach towels, dirty sunbeds, constant unlocking of plastic keys, forcing mountain climbs in the heat at the reception.
But even all these outrages of a hotel claiming to be 5 * could not spoil our impressions of the rest. Moreover, everything not related to the service of the hotel was very good. Spacious room with a gorgeous sea view, a kettle, a bit noisy for a modern hotel, but the air conditioner works properly. As an amateur underwater photographer, I responsibly declare that the hotel has an excellent coral reef, albeit not very bright, which is typical for Dahab, but with a lot of living creatures. On holidays, Paul's colleague, an octopus, comes. Really friendly bartender on the beach, very fond of our company for generous orders of expensive and tasteless food. We also became friends with the taxi dispatcher, Yasser. If you order a taxi in two directions - the price is 60 pounds and it makes no sense to take "Redvans" in Dahab for 25 (with bargaining), especially since taxis are served to the room.
And yet they managed to spoil the rest on the last day. Having requested a check on the eve of the day of departure, I was surprised by the final amount. I was also surprised by the reaction of the hotel manager Mismail, who was clearly upset and even outraged that we were only leaving tomorrow. The fact is that I had a suitcase with me, I took the equipment from the dive center. Therefore, "no hesitation", this "handsome man" added the amount of $ 180 (the bill is attached). However, even realizing his mistake (of course, not arithmetic, but tactical), he did not consider it necessary to "win back" back, citing a failure in system. Greed overpowered. I speak about the fact of fraud confidently, as I received confirmation of this. In the evening, an invoice with an identified postscript was presented to another Russian-speaking manager Ahmed (AADEL) (they changed). The guy turned pale, said that his friend would have big problems and asked I replied that the problem could be solved if the general manager of the hotel came with an apology, whose smug smile we saw only on the plasma screen at the reception (see photo). the reception desk is left to itself like our anecdotal law enforcement officers: "They gave me a computer - turn around as you like. " We were finally convinced of deliberate fraud when we began to deal with the account of our friends. It turns out that 170-180 dollars is a "tax". Even more indignant are the managers of the Anex Tour, whose only function is to play along in the petty fraud of the hotel managers. It was with the participation of the accompanying manager, Mohammed, that they managed to negotiate half of the amount of bad checks. In conclusion, I call on all tourists, friends of Dahab, the diving and surfing community to boycott this hotel, at least until a public apology from its management.