New Year with Voyage
The holiday started on December 29th. Prior to this, Idis-Tour employees handed over a package of documents from the tour operator Voyage-Lux and wished you a pleasant stay. It was not the first time that we traveled from this Idis-Tour agency and each time we were delighted with the work of Natalia Kovaleva, who does everything very carefully and takes care of her tourists. True, in this case, she was dissatisfied with the work of her partners from Voyage-Lux, who did not behave quite correctly and made it difficult for her to work with tourists by increasing the cost of tours several times, etc. , but about Voyage-Lux below.
An old, but quite comfortable Il-86 of Siberia Airlines delivered us to Sharm al-Sheikh with a minimum delay. When passing through passport control, the meeting company Azur travel provided standard services for pasting visa stamps for an additional fee, and then the hotel guide Ahmad took us to the bus of the company. And then the circus began...
The bus started moving.
Until that moment, we were sure that we were going to the Grand Plaza Resort 5 * lux hotel booked under contract No. 157 dated October 17.2007 and confirmed (according to information from Voyage-Lux) (as it is positioned on the Voyage-Lux website). There were 7 other people on the bus who were sure of this. So, after the departure of the bus from the airport, the guide Ahmad announced to us and to the tourists traveling to a number of hotels that they have no other choice but to go to the Millennium Oyoun Hotel & Resort 5 * hotel, that it is equal or better than the hotels booked by them in Moscow.
After mass indignation, a conversation with the owner of Azur travel, attempts by the first tourists to settle in the hotel they booked, the Grand Plaza group and a number of other tourists decided to spend the rest of the night in the proposed hotel, and then sort things out with the company. We tried to defend the accommodation conditions booked in the Grand Plaza, and we partially succeeded.
The next day, the guide Ahmad told us about our capabilities (by this time tourists had arrived at the hotel who tried to assert their rights to settle in other hotels), or rather, about the lack of them. Cause. Non-compliance by the Russian tour operator Voyage-Lux with its obligations to the White Angel travel agency in terms of payment for tours, the termination of contracts with it and, of course, the elimination of reservations for hotel rooms. Travel agency Azur travel, according to Ahmad, saved our vacation and Voyage Suite.
We were placed in a decent hotel, where there were still rooms. Indeed, there were plenty of rooms, since the hotel was unfinished, there was no heated pool, a pontoon, the beach was not fully equipped (there were not enough sunbeds and walls from the wind) and there was no beautiful reef, like in the Grand Plaza. The rest of the hotel is really good and in the future will pull on a solid four. People can relax without special claims to diving in it.
The staff is quite attentive and agile, although there were small, but typical for Egypt, problems with it.
Special thanks to the hotel staff for the superbly organized New Year's Eve! It was better than in many neighboring serious hotels! (Although it cost almost three times less than the Voyage-Lux took from us! )
But, at the same time, there are big claims to the hotel restaurant in terms of quality (but not taste and assortment! ) of food and the consequences of its consumption. Some of the tourists, and your obedient servant, suffered for a long time with diarrhea and poisoning with high fever. Excursion service and transfers to the airport were organized very clearly, almost not in Arabic (% =)))).
Summary. The hotel is not bad. The Idis Tour travel agency, and especially Natalya Kovaleva, work well. Travel agency Azur travel, and especially the guide Ahmad, proved to be quite correct. BUT!! ! Tour operator Voyage-Lux is disgusting and irresponsible!
By not paying for tours and breaking hotel contracts back in mid-December, he actually sent tourists almost nowhere! True, the situation was much worse for tourists (including those with small children) in Hurghada, who traveled from Voyage-Lux a little earlier and were not met by anyone at the airport. I fully support other tourists in their fight against unscrupulous tour operators that discredit the Russian tourist industry.
And going to Egypt is worth it, very worth it, especially for those who love beautiful reefs ...In Marsa Alam ...everything is not trampled down there yet and it is very beautiful! And there are still more honest people and tour operators too! As the good soldier Schweik said, "having fallen into a pit with shit, lick it and move on"! We have traveled and will continue to travel! We rested and we will rest! But now only not with Voyage-Lux!! !