Pickalbatros Aqua Blu Resort - Hurghada — Hotel in Red Sea

Cannot recommend this hotel enough. I went with a friend but I would say it is for all group types, friends, families, couples. The hotel grounds were immaculate and the staff worked really hard day and night to achieve this. The three hotels being linked have so much variety of pools, bars and restaurants.||Check in went very smooth, we arrived around 9pm and asked if we could have a room with two double beds as ours booked was for a double. They sent us to the restaurant for dinner while they arranged this. We were given a room near the aqua park. They give you a towel cars per guest and two other cards which we thought were both room keys. One of the cards is for the electric which we didn’t realise so when we went out the door card was in the electric and we took the other one, so we couldn’t get in at the end of the night. Reception quickly sorted and gave us another room keycard so we had two. ||The room was spacious with two small double beds and a single bed. Large dressing table and plenty of storage for clothes. The bathroom was a bit tight but it did have a large shower. There are also mini toiletries included. We were ground floor and had a balcony with a couple of chairs and table. There is a mini fridge in the room and we were provided with lots of bottles of water which was great as we also used them to clean our teeth. We did have a real problem with mosquitoes in the room but it wasn’t until half way through the holiday I found out that housekeeping can spray the room daily on request, they also put in a repellent plug in. After this we were no longer being eaten alive at night. Our cleaner was brilliant, everyday he made us some duvet design or animal on our bed. Every time he saw he was always asking if the room was ok. We were given fresh towels every day, and he always made sure it was clean and tidy. ||There is so many pools to choose from and we never found it a problem getting a sun-bed at any time of day. We spent most of our time at the large pool in Aqua Vista. You can request thicker mattresses to go on top of the sun beds from the lifeguards. The pool guys work so hard supplying guests with drinks. After the first day whenever we arrived to the sunbed, the guys were straight over with our drinks as they remembered our usual. We had ice in our drinks and ate the ice cream with no problems or upset belly’s. Tipping is not expected either however when we did occasionally towards the end of the holiday, they really did appreciate it. You do get a lot of the guys coming round the beds trying to sell trios, spa treatments etc, but if you say no thanks, they don’t hassle you.|The beach was ok, however the sunbeds provided aren’t the ones by the water, so you have to walk down to the shoreline and the beds are on some raised concrete. The sea was really warm and crystal clear, lots of little fish and some harmless jellyfish. We only spent one morning so can’t comment on bar service if food. ||There were three main restaurants to choose from, the one in Aqua Blu and Aqua Vista were the largest, however our favourite for all three meals was Aqua Vista. Being gluten intolerant, the chef made me cakes every evening on request and pancakes for breakfast. They also offered me pasta etc. if I was unsure of anything containing gluten on the buffet, the chef or restaurant manager would help me. There is definitely something for everyone, even the most pickier eaters. The staff would always ask what you want to drink and also clean away the table very quickly. We did one of the al a carte restaurants on our last night and the food was lovely. Again they catered for my gluten intolerance.||Evening entertainment was a lot of dancing acts at the stage in Aqua Park, this started around 9.30pm and a bit of music after so by around 10.30/11 it was quite quiet. You were able to get drinks until midnight. Again the staff served you drinks at the table. One night there was a fire show at Aqua Blu followed by a foam pool party that looked fun. ||The location Is close to the airport, around 10 mins from Senzo Mall and about 40 mins to the marina which had lots of bars and restaurants.||We had a couple of treatments in the spa which I felt was worth the money compared to what you would spend back home, the girls were lovely. ||We booked a trip to Cairo and the pyramids, but not through hotel. We booked our own flights with Egyptair, and a private tour guide with Hurghada Funday Trips. Our flights cost £270 for two return. And the private guide for the whole day and driver was £200 which included lunch and entry to the pyramids. We paid a further £50 each on the day for extras, horse and cart at pyramids, entry inside pyramid, private boat cruise on the Nile, and drinks from shops provided all day. We got picked up from Cairo airport at 10am and he filled our day with lots of things to do and see at Giza and Cairo and also asked us if there was anything else that we wanted to do, we were dropped to the airport early evening ready for flight back. Cannot recommend this company enough as we were treated live VIPs from start to finish and was so much more personal than being on a group tour.||Check out is at 12pm and after this time your room key card won’t work, we got back late to the room to grab our stuff but the cleaner was around and let us in. We called reception for help with our cases and they sent someone to collect them for us. As we wasn’t leaving until the evening, they let us keep the towels until we left, so just before we handed them in for the towel cards which we handed to reception. ||Overall we had the best holiday at the three Aqua hotels and would definitely return. A big thank you to everyone there for making us feel so welcome and the most...

Have you ever been to an all inclusive resort before? I have, if I hadn't I might have been fooled into thinking this hotel was in any way acceptable.||||Do you enjoy the same poor quality, bland tasting buffet every day? Do you also enjoy a high likelihood that said buffet will make you vomit? Have you ever been to a buffet where other guests advise you to avoid chicken, rice, fresh fruit and vegetables, ice, sauce, bread and seafood because it'll almost certainly make you ill? And even if you do avoid all of them, you still get ill! ||||You'll also enjoy waiting ten minutes in a queue for something to be cooked, only to have another guest push in front of you and take three whole pizzas all to themselves! Hope you enjoy telling people to wait their turn because if you don't, you'll not be eating and staff won't do anything about it.||||Do you enjoy a full day of travel and then being put in not only the wrong room, but totally wrong hotel? Do you enjoy phoning reception ten times and being told you're in the correct room even though your booking says one hotel and you're in another and that only being corrected when you ask which hotel a restaurant is in and catching out the receptionist that because that restaurant is next to your room and in the other hotel, that must mean your room is also in the wrong one?||||Do you enjoy adult male staff members trying to touch your female toddler constantly? And catching them staring at your female children when you aren't looking? Yes, it is absolutely disgusting.||||Do you enjoy finding rodent droppings behind a door in your room?||||Do you enjoy other guests teenage children banging on your door at midnight and staff telling you the only thing that can be done is you personally following them to their room? Despite there being staff and security cameras everywhere?||||Do you enjoy hotel shops which are wildly overpriced? And upon checkout having charges to your room completely made up to try and scam even more money out of you?||||Do you enjoy being constantly harassed to have spa treatments, photography sessions or go snorkeling? When you already said many times to the same person that you don't want to?||||Do your children enjoy a nice ice cream on a hot day? Fantastic, they can have all they can eat, from 6pm, unless they've run out, which they more often than not will have.||||Black mold in the shower? You'll love it. Marble tables in the room which aren't put together properly and will fall over the minute you put something on them? Literally not a single working drawer? Safes which the batteries fall out of? A fridge which literally electrocutes you when you open it? Doors which don't lock? Room service which takes six phone calls and a walk to reception to finally order and then takes an hour to arrive, which you're then overcharged for? Pickalbatros Aqua Blu has them all.||||I cannot stress how much you should avoid this resort, frankly I would avoid Hurghada altogether. Constant scams, creepy behaviour, airports which charge for toilet paper from a male staff member in the woman's bathroom. ||||Just do yourself a favour, yes it's cheap, but it's cheap for a reason. Because it's awful. Wherever you were considering going...

Arrival & check-in The welcome at reception was friendly, if unremarkable.

Room The family room was very nice; we genuinely loved it and felt comfortable there.

Pools The pool areas are attractive, and our children enjoyed them a lot. Unfortunately, there is very little shade over the pools. In the intense midday sun, some pools are closed for about an hour; we found that reasonable.

Dining This was our main disappointment. Over our 10-day stay, even across various restaurants, we experienced very little variety. Food was often presented in silver chafing dishes without any decoration, which felt careless. The fries were consistently rubbery, unsalted, and greasy—never crispy. On the positive side, the pizzas were excellent: you could choose the toppings, and they were baked in real pizza ovens. This became our culinary highlight of the 10 days. For dessert, there were always fruit, various cakes, pastries, and jelly. However, the cakes all tasted broadly the same and differed mainly in colour. We did appreciate one evening with skewered bananas that guests could decorate with chocolate and other toppings.

Tummy troubles Several of us repeatedly experienced diarrhea, stomach cramps, and severe vomiting.

Ice cream Ice cream was available only at a single stand between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM, in three flavors (strawberry, vanilla, apricot). From other Egypt vacations, we are used to having ice cream in the afternoon as well, plus popsicles in various flavors. The children especially missed that.

Service About 95% of the staff were exceptionally courteous, friendly, and very child-oriented. This made our stay genuinely pleasant.

Entertainment and noise levels What stressed us most was the volume of the music—at the foam party in the evening program, even at the kids’ disco, and sometimes with so-called background music. The volume was, in our view, unacceptably high and potentially harmful. Although several children and adults repeatedly covered their ears, no one reduced the volume. We liked the atmosphere and the program itself; our concern is solely the excessive volume.

VR room The VR room was a big hit with our children. We appreciated that it is free, though you receive only one token per night, which allows one game each evening. This reduced waiting times and avoided arguments, but two tokens per child would still feel reasonable.

Beach We did not particularly like the beach. It is a small cove, not ideal for long walks, and it was extremely crowded.

Animation The animation program felt rather weak; the shows seemed low-budget and not of high quality. The animation team, however, were friendly, funny, and spoke many languages.

Pharmacy service We found the WhatsApp contact with the pharmacist very helpful, with all required medications delivered to reception. A small caution: we were repeatedly offered black seed oil—always the most expensive product.

Conclusion Despite bouts of stomach upset and a middle-ear infection, we did manage to enjoy our holiday. However, we would not return to this hotel: the excessively loud music and the overall mediocre food were decisive...