JAZ Sharm Dreams — Hotel in South Sinai

We have just returned from an 11 night stay at this hotel as a party of five. Myself, Husband, 10 year old Daughter and my parents who are in their seventies.| |Rooms:|After our transfer to the hotel, we were not greeted with any welcome and or welcome drinks but at the reception desk we were told we were given a complimentary room upgrade which we were delighted about. We were taken to our rooms (3124 and 3125) and we were completely underwhelmed – we dread to think what a standard room was like…! Both rooms needed a complete refurbishment. The telephones in our rooms did not work, the mattresses were very hard and the pillows were incredibly hard and uncomfortable which made sleeping difficult. Bathrooms are very dated and the tiles were grubby. We were located very closely to the evening entertainment and had to listen to thumping music until past 11pm.|Our rooms were cleaned and had fresh towels daily.| |Food and Drink:|The hotel caters for Eastern Europeans who we found incredibly rude and there are little English at the hotel. The food in the main hall was awful, had a bad smell and was extremely dark and uninviting. Birds were flying around, and they’d land and sit on the pastries and bread – which guests were eating. The chairs were stained and dirty. You were very lucky if you didn’t have to wait around for a table and cutlery and/or wait for tables to be cleaned. You have to get your own drinks and only small glasses are offered. A lot of the time they run out of glasses and you’re given paper cups instead.|There is no toaster for a slice of toast in the morning which baffled us and was the first hotel we had stayed at which didn’t have this facility available.|The waiting staff are so stretched that they can’t give you the level of service you’d expect from a 5* hotel.| |We booked in at the À la carte restaurant at Jaz Fayrouz – what an awful experience. Nothing À la carte about it. We were offered buffet food, cold buffet food! When I brought my plate back to the table and started to eat, I immediately called the waiter over who told me they had a problem with the electrics – therefore keeping food warm was a problem. They reheated the food for me but unfortunately, this made it inedible as it was so dry.|A Family behind us went up for some pizza and when they brought it back and put it in the middle of the table, a crow landed on the table and took off with a whole slice of pizza – we were horrified. We could not wait to get out of the place. It was nice however, to be served a glass of wine with our meal and the beach front setting was lovely.| |We couldn’t stand another awful meal in the buffet area and complained to our holiday representative. He listened to our problems and liaised with Mina on reception and told him our concerns. Mina was incredibly helpful and he suggested we eat (for the duration of our stay) at the Tex Mex which was separate to the main buffet area and was given great service from Mahmoud. We were very grateful for this as the food is so much nicer in there.| |We did book À la carte Italian at Jaz Dreams and it was much better; it was a set menu. Tasty food and excellent waiter service. We ate there three times throughout our stay and each time was fantastic – thank you to all involved.| |We did eat out four nights at Naama Bay, it was a very pleasant walk along the promenade to get there which we all enjoyed.| |We went over to the buffet restaurant at Jaz Fayrouz for breakfast (on our 7th day annoyingly!) This was so much nicer, it is only small, however we found the quality of food so much better, a nicer environment and there was a toaster which we could toast the lovely fresh bread available 😊| |Entertainment:|The pool area was such a weird vibe! When music was played, it was as though they wanted to attract an 18-30’s audience. The entertainment team tried to get guests to participate in Yoga, darts, aquarobics etc.|We didn’t watch any shows of an evening; very limited tables and extremely loud music played before the show started and we were unable to have a proper conversation across the table. Instead, we would go into the lobby area or Caribe bar and sometimes the nights were long and boring. | |Pool:|Lovely, comfortable sunbeds and plenty of umbrellas to escape the hot sun, the lifeguards work hard to make sure you’re comfortable and have everything you need. Extremely slippery marble floors which is a recipe for disaster when getting in and out the pool area. You must be so careful, we saw many people falling over.|If you are unsteady on your feet then please consider this hotel carefully as there are no handrails to assist getting in and out of the pool, on the pool bridges, basically on any of the stairs throughout the hotel and grounds. My Dad is quite unsteady and unfortunately he did struggle getting in and out the pool and we always ensured someone was with him to support getting over the bridges.|During two of the days, the maintenance staff were painting the floors and had such an overpowering smell of paint whilst relaxing. Surely there could have been a more appropriate time to do this task. | |In summary, we would not stay at this hotel again because of the food and how it’s catered for Eastern Europeans, lack of entertainment and required room improvements. We were all in agreement that this is more of a 3* hotel than a 5*. Improvements are required and little changes can go a long way to making this...

This is a 4* hotel at best!

Check in: Due to a very mind-numbing error by LoveHolidays we were left without a room for about 12 hours. I believe the hotel could've given us the room and saved us the loitering in the lobby and hashed this out with loveholidays but instead we had to handle the issue which left us with a sour taste in our mouths so early into the holiday.

Food: After the first day everything seemed so much better. The food was surprisingly good for an all inclusive. Some may see it as a bit samey samey but I enjoyed the foods I loved and looked forward to having them along with other cuisines the next day. Particularly my favourites were the barbecued kofta kebab with freshly made bread, the greek meat moussaka, mashed potatoes, the freshly made omelettes, the white chocolate covered donuts, syrup cake and Arayees (meat stuffed fried pastry). Also the dessert section was really flavoursome. It's quite shocking that all the pretty cakes actually tasted of something because with all inclusive hotels, their desserts usually are style over substance, but at Sharm Dreams the cakes had flavour and we couldn't resist having cake for lunch and dinner.

Drinks: Standard soft drinks are served here: water, sparkling water, pepsi, diet pepsi, mirinda, two flavours of slushie by the pool, cocktails and cocktails. The alcohol is local so not great, but if you're looking for a drink you can have throughout the whole trip I would suggest the watermelon slushie with vodka or a strawberry mojito. The long island iced tea tasted like medicine. They also give free ice lollies by the main pool bar.

Entertainment: The entertainment team worked extremely hard and honestly made our trip a fun experience. Special mention to Amr, Amira, Nader and Basel Ousama, who were very attentive and convinced us to go to the Taj Mahal Club which was great. There is always something going on from water polo, darts, dancing, Zumba work outs and aqua aerobics. The music was a bit weird some was a party vibe some was very slow and romantic and some was just the "DJ" playing around with mixing tracks together. At 9pm the kids do their show for 30mins and then adults have a show at 9:30-10:30/11. There was karaoke with live singers one night, a couple's competition, and we missed the rest as we were busy in the town, but apparently there were acrobatics and other dancing shows.

Rooms: The rooms definitely need renewing because they don't match the aesthetics of the rest of the hotel. They are dated but clean. And the bed was really big and comfortable. We had two rooms and the hot water and air con wasn't working in one of them but that was resolved as soon as we notified the reception. The rooms have a safe, a TV, iron and most rooms have a balcony. We were on the bottom floor and we had a balcony with access to a small pool.

Service: Overall the service was okay. Every staff member will tell you a different price for something and it was exhausting. There were some stand out staff which we have to mention including Bhal Eldeen from the Reception, Amr from the Entertainment team, Rico from the Excursions team and the Chef who was on the omelette counter every morning. They all provided a great service and were very memorable. Pools and beach: The beach was packed and you would have to get up pretty early if you wanted a sunbed.

Extras: The hotel will have people selling excursions, I recommend Rico for Quad biking Safari and Khaled for the boat tours. The spa treatment I had was okay, seeing as the spa was dated, I definitely got ripped off paying $40 for a 50min medicinal massage. Music came on 15mins into the treatment. I gave a 10$ tip which I hope she got to keep. It was okay, but in London I would've paid £25 max. Cleo beach was nice but only 5 slides (3 adults 2 kids ones) and the wave pool were operating which was disappointing.

I would visit again and this time be more aware of those out to make a quick buck and make sure I was more demanding And hopefully they update the rooms by then and better WiFi, I advise you...

If you want to be stressed out, this is the hotel for you. Here are my “highlights”:

The “service” is terrible: When I say “terrible" I mean “we asked for a pen and we ended up having to buy one” level of terrible. Basic questions seem to puzzle the staff and give them a visible aneurism. The answer is almost always a resounding “no” accompanied by a look that makes you feel like dirt on their shoes. The hotel is old with some clear flaws (tired rooms, no plugs by the beds, an old disconnected ceiling vent falling on my husband’s head etc.), which you could actually look past if it was coupled with attentive service. But, with the odd exceptions, they are rude, oscillating between actively ignoring you when you need something or harassing you when you are trying to relax. It feels as if they are actively trying to make your stay unpleasant. Their training must be spot on as their stinking attitude is impressively consistent across the hotel. Other guests were visibly annoyed too which, whilst gave us some reassurance that it wasn’t just us, created a tense atmosphere.

Check-in was especially painful: We were being herded like cattle. No communication or care. Shout out to Mina who single-handedly managed to ruin our first two days. Zero useful information was given on arrival even though we were the only people at the desk, apart from a badly printed map which was useless. He failed to give us our welcome letter which included a meeting invite with a travel agent rep to plan our stay. It was by pure luck that we bumped into him in the lobby. Mina also failed to give us the link/QR code to the hotel facilities info. We stumbled on it hidden behind a flower pot on day 3. There was no information given around the use of their sister hotel across the road, access to the beach or the fact that we had a free dinner included at their (terrible) Italian restaurant. We wasted days figuring out what we could/couldn’t do whilst constantly being harassed by various team members to buy whatever nonsense they were selling (7 different people came up to us in the space of 3 hours while we were “relaxing” by the pool, selling everything and their mother - including excursions tourists were not allowed to go on due to travel restrictions).

The WiFi is worse than dial up: The set up takes you back to the early 2000s. You have to ask for codes at reception daily as you keep getting logged out and sessions are limited. You feel sorry for the person at reception having to manually cut hundreds of little slivers of paper out daily. While this is all happening, there is a “green hotel” sign a few meters away which is ironic as many many trees must have died to provide guests with a constant supply of printed WiFi codes so that their fragile set up doesn’t implode. Eventually, you are rewarded with internet so slow that its impossible to do anything.

The pool “bar”: Here, you are welcomed by a charming man shouting “WHAT DO YOU WANT” in your face. When you ask for a menu, it takes three people to produce a single sheet of paper before you find that half the stuff on it is not available. BUT, that’s only if they happen to have glasses at the time, otherwise you are told to go away (with the same amount of charm). Once you get past these hurdles, you’ll find that you have been blessed with a glass of tippex of a drink.

Other stuff if you are still reading: The taxi service at the front desk is especially irritating. It’s as if the guy has turrets, screaming “TAXI!!!” into your face every time you walk by when it is blatantly obvious that it’s a taxi service. He keeps pushing you even if you say ‘no, thank you’. He even followed me out of the hotel to explain his services (that being getting people from A to B…) which he himself described as “not too expensive”. There is loud music playing by the pool and at the entertainment area at random times (through bad speakers). On some nights, this goes on till midnight and you can hear it in the rooms.

The two stars are for the pool area and the animals (cute...