I spent two weeks with Red Sea Divers, and I have to say it was a bit of a mixed experience.
Positives:
The highlight of our trip was our dive guide, Pedro. He was very friendly and helpful, always excited to go on dives with us. He was calm underwater and handled small problems and new divers with ease. On the boat, he made sure everyone was okay and felt welcomed. He is a genuinely good guy!
The center has two boats, or yachts, as they are here in Hurghada. Both are good and offer plenty of space to relax and prepare the equipment. I also liked the lunches the cook prepared for us. The boat crew, in general, is happy, energetic, helpful and friendly.
Based on what I saw, their equipment is in good condition and well maintained. I didn’t see any worrying wear or tear in BCDs or regulators. When it comes to underwater behavior, dive guides are responsible and make sure divers don’t touch the corals or animals.
Diving from the Golden Beach Resort is very convenient because the dive center is located inside it, and boats depart from the resort’s pier. The center is also reasonably priced.
Negatives:
Red Sea Divers felt less like a diving center and more like a snorkeling center. Boats are full of snorkelers, and they seem to be the priority. Some days they had a separate boat for divers and snorkelers, but during our two weeks, those days were rare.
Even though the boats are big, on many days they were packed with people - mostly snorkelers. Some days, kids were running all over the place and jumping from the boat when divers tried to prepare their equipment or climb up after the dive.
You have to wait a lot. For the first few days, they told us to come to the center at 8:15 just so that we could wait on the boat for almost two hours. On the boat, they asked people to go upstairs, where there is limited shade from the burning sun. In the end, we ignored them and started to arrive at 9:00 and stayed inside the boat cabin. However, arriving a bit later led to another problem. More about it a bit later.
Their rental gear selection is limited and not suitable for the environment. They have enough regulators and BCDs, but not enough suits. They told me they only have 3 mm suits and promised that it was enough. It wasn’t. For the rest of the trip, I wore both long and short suits, although I felt quite cold anyway (water was +22 - +23°C).
One might say that is just my personal problem, but I saw the same happen every day. Divers were shivering and complaining about how cold they were. Some were struggling to recover from the first dive and had to skip the second. Despite this, they gave new divers short wetsuits, or suits that were too big for them.
I’ve dived in Hurghada many times, and this was the first time the center didn’t have proper gear.
Related to the arrival time: if we arrived at 9:00, we skipped some of the pointless waiting, but there was a risk that suitable equipment wasn’t left. This happened to us. What made things even worse is that we lost a piece of gear that was stored in a box. Luckily, it was just a cheap metal stick.
Finally, there is the issue with the dive sites. Hurghada has a lot of good dive sites, but they decided to go to the same sites over and over again.
I know Hurghada’s dive sites, so I asked them to take us to other sites, but they never did. I got the feeling they just wanted to prioritize snorkelers.
My experience from the past years is that when divers spend a week or two with the same dive center, diving every day, the center acknowledges that. They make sure the divers get to see different dive sites and they don’t have to worry about the equipment every morning. I didn’t really see that with Red Sea Divers.
We also tried to rise these issues during our stay, but it had no effect.
My experience wasn’t super bad, but I won’t be diving again with Red Sea Divers, because I know better options...
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