Xperience Sea Breeze Resort — Hotel in South Sinai

My girlfriend and I recently stayed at Xperience Sea Breeze Resort for 5 nights, and we had a lovely time. We’ll break the review into sections relating to particular aspects of the stay:||Location: The hotel is a 10 minute drive from the airport, which was convenient after the flight. It’s also a 10 minute drive to Soho Square. The hotel has a fantastic view to the mountains of the Sinai peninsula, and is a short walk from the “beach” (the hotel has their own section of beach). The area immediately surrounding the hotel doesn’t have much to it (a few shops, but that’s about it). Overall, we were satisfied with the location||Accommodation & Facilities: We thought the facilities & accommodation reflected that of a high 3 star/low 4 star resort. We were satisfied with our room, however there were some parts that were “rough around the edges” such as a broken plank under the mattress. There are two main heated swimming pools, but if you fancy braving the cold there are three smaller pools (not heated during our stay). There is also a gym, but the weights equipment is limited. If you just fancy cardio, there are two running machines, a bike and a cross trainer.||Food: As my girlfriend is a vegetarian & I am a meat eater, we have quite a comprehensive view on the all inclusive food. For most of your dining, you will be eating at the Tiran buffet restaurant. In my opinion, breakfast is the lowest quality meal, and offers the same set menu every day. Lunch and dinner offer a lot of variety, including some options for fussy eaters. However, if you’re vegetarian, the food can get quite repetitive and it isn’t always clearly labelled what’s vegetarian or not (though if you ask the staff, they’re very helpful). For vegans, it would be even more limited. They do have a small vegetarian section which they update each day, but this only had two pots and usually one was rice. For meat eaters, particularly those that love flavour, I would definitely recommend this hotel. When choosing dessert, I would suggest going for the dessert served in the pot - this is the FRESHEST - we found that the cakes were a little bit stale on the outside. The dessert in the pot was often fantastic (the basbousa was unbelievable, my new favourite dessert).||There is also the option to book the “a la carte” restaurant once a week called “Elements”, which is a BBQ specific restaurant. We didn’t feel that the quality and variety was vastly different to Tiran. You can also pay extra to book in at “Masala”, however we heard other customers complaining about the quality of this restaurant wasn’t fantastic, so it may be worth avoiding.||Drinks & Bars: After reading quite a few reviews, we weren’t sure what to expect with the drinks menu, however we were very satisfied with the selection of the drinks. The hotel has multiple bars, however we often found ourselves at the bar located next to the lobby. They have a cocktail menu with around 8 alcoholic options and 8 non-alcoholic options, and we enjoyed trialling the different cocktails on the menu. We saw some reviews saying that people found the cocktails were often weak - on the contrary, we found that they certainly didn’t skimp on the spirits! They also do offer beer and wine, and a lot of guests seemed to enjoy these too, however we focused on the cocktails.||Service: Onto the best part about the hotel, and quite easily the main sell - the service was absolutely phenomenal. As a couple that haven’t experienced much of this sort of thing before, we felt at points like we were treated like royalty. We saw some reviews that mentioned that some of the hotel staff seemed a bit disinterested and unprofessional, however we felt that these reviews were quite harsh. If we wanted to be picky, the reception team were a bit brief with their introduction to the resort at the beginning of the holiday. They do provide you with an information leaflet. All the restaurant staff, bar staff, pool staff, and cleaning staff, were truly commendable and so kind. We want to thank each and every one of you for the kindness that you showed us during this holiday. This is the main reason we fell in love with our time at the hotel. ||Extras: The hotel offer a shuttle bus evening service (free of charge!!) to the three main spots of Sharm el Sheikh - the old market, Naama Bay, and Soho Square. We would HIGHLY recommend taking advantage of these, which you can sign up for ON THE DAY OF the shuttle, but bear in mind this is first come first serve so make sure you sign up at reception in the morning! But yes, if you are looking to explore Sharm, take advantage of these trips! We visited Soho Square and the old market, and thoroughly enjoyed our time at both. The only critique is the pick up time is around 3 hours after you have been dropped off, and this is quite long if you aren’t eating/drinking out at these places! ||The hotel also has a private strip of beach and its own pier which you can use for snorkelling. For the more hardcore scuba divers, I think you’d probably want a bit more than what’s offered by the resort (not much to see in the way of fish in the designated snorkelling area). We’d like to say a huge thank you to the hotel’s diving centre, as they allowed us to use a life jacket free of charge, and this was really appreciated!||People: This isn’t really relevant to the hotel, but is more so a response to some of the reviews that mention the people that come to the resort. Yes, there are a lot of Russian people that stay at this resort. But this was not a problem for us at all! In fact, we felt that the reviews mentioning the “rudeness” of the Russian people at the resort were harsh and unfounded. There are also quite a few English people, and everyone was lovely that we interacted with!||Entertainment: The hotel offers nightly entertainment, and we attended a couple of nights. We enjoyed the performances, particularly one night where there was a guy walking on massive wooden sticks!||Hassle: One thing that we weren’t particularly fond of was the members of the hotel that attempt to sell you stuff around the resort. Although this didn’t anger us, it’s worth noting that if you spend enough time by the pools/in the lobby area, you will be approached. We also found that the spa staff were particularly persistent, and we had the same interaction with one member of the spa staff four times (he managed to forget us every time, our very own Groundhog Day!). For most, this sort of thing won’t bother you too much, and as long as you say no politely they will understand and leave you alone. But, this is something to note.||Overall: To conclude this rather long-winded review, we had an absolutely fantastic time at the hotel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we revisit in the coming years. As I said previously, thank you so much to all the staff at the hotel, you truly made this experience one to remember. We only wish that we could’ve had more time with you! This isn’t quite five stars because of the minor drawbacks I mentioned, but this was close to being the...

I'm sorry but this is definitely not 5 star. When we were looking to book this holiday we saw a number of reviews with negative comments. However, due to the really high number of positive reviews, I told myself that the negative comments were probably just those people who are never happy. Unfortunately, I found their comments to be very accurate in the description of the hotel. Please read my full review as not all negative but I want people to have a true reflection of my experience at this hotel.

I'm not sure how they can advertise as ALL inclusive as this isn't the case. The all inclusive has they call it has set hours, meaning you can only take advantage of all inclusive between the hours of 11am and midnight - so already you can see not everything is included. They have a 24 hour bar but if you stay in there after midnight you will have to pay for your drinks. What you get from the all inclusive selection is very limited - with the drinks options being beer, vodka, white wine and red wine. Anything beyond that was chargeable so definitely not the selection I would have expected from a 5 star, all inclusive hotel. We were provided with 2 bottles of water every day. If we wanted any more we had to keep the bottles and take them to a water dispenser to fill them up and there weren't many of these around the resort.

The selection for the evening meals was limited and although they had a different theme every night, I found that meant there would be one meal option that reflected the theme for that night and the rest of the food would be exactly the same as every other night or some similar variation.

I’d definitely recommend the Indian restaurant. It’s extra cost but well worth it.

We didn't have lunch at the main restaurant as I was quite happy with the options at the pool side bar of cheese burger and chips or pizza at lunch time.

Breakfast in the main restaurant wasn't bad. Although still the same every day I wouldn't really expect breakfast to vary too much. Most days I had an omelet which was freshly prepared in front of you and was very good. They also have a selection of meats, eggs, pastries and cereals. Though for the fussy eaters, don't expect it to be the same as a full English. If this is your expectation you'll be disappointed.

The hotel is quite small - if you have a look on Google Maps you can see just how small. So there is not a lot to do there. There are 5 pools. 3 of which are quite small. 2 are quite a nice size. We tended to stay around the middle pool which has the slide, mainly because while we were there this pool was quite quiet. The pool at the bottom of the resort appeared to be where a lot of the entertainment took place. We were looking for relaxation more than anything so opted for a quieter setting.

I don't want to slate it as we did have a nice time. The hotel was clean, if a little dated but that was fine and the room was really nice. The reason I've given the review 3 stars is because of the staff who were amazing. So attentive and the service was great. On our first day the person manning the towel hut asked which sun loungers we wanted and if we wanted them reserved for the rest of the week which was great. No having to get up at the crack of dawn to get your sun lounger. The bar attendant by the pool then ensured our glasses were never empty. As soon as my beer was gone another would appear. This made the experience very relaxing which was exactly what we wanted.

The hotel also has it's own jetty which goes out into the sea. We really wished we'd taken full advantage of this and it looked amazing. We heard so many people talk about how clear the water was and how many fish they saw.

Before booking this holiday I would recommend having a look on YouTube at the walkaround videos to get a feel for the hotel.

In summary, we had a nice time but we definitely had expected more than what we got. I've never been to a 5 star all inclusive where so much is not inclusive. I'm not saying it was terrible but I do want people to be aware of its limitations...

I love this hotel. For me, it is almost perfect. The rooms are large and very clean. The showers are deceptively powerful, but the towels aren't very big - but I like to bundle up, so that's more of a personal opinion. The air conditioning in the rooms is brilliant, especially as my husband and I like to sleep in as cold a room as possible. Mini bar / fridges are provided but at an extra cost, but they still have enough room to stash your own drinks. TV's in the rooms have USB slots, and I heard a few guests bought their fire sticks from home. Our cleaner would leave lots of different kinds of towel art on a daily basis, and the room was spotless. The food is a little repetitive, but we always found something to eat, and it was always fresh and plenty of it. The restaurant staff were great and friendly. Siad, the Yousiff's and Mark are the ones that we came into contact with most often. The waiters in the bars again are amazing. Always zooming about delivering drinks with lots of friendly chat. I can not speak highly enough of Shady and Carlos. We spent a lot of time at the pool with the swim-up bar, and Matta always had a smile and a kind word every time we collected our towels from him. My husband likes the shade, and Matta would ensure that the parasol was moved as soon as the sun started to hit his sunbed - often before we had even noticed. Kiro at the bar was kept busy making sure all the guests were well hydrated but never too busy to give a smile or a chat. The entertainment team. I don't know where to start. From morning to night, Talia and Amy didn't stop. The brilliant thing is that you could join in with as much or as little as you wanted - and there were a lot of different activities on offer. Gentle stretching and yoga, aqua gym, water polo, pool Olympic games, water polo, music quizzes, mini disco for the kids, trips to club (Pacha was very popular) and cocktail games. The Easter Day pool party was great fun. These two women were always around and always smiling. No small feat when you work out the hours that they work. They are a real credit to the hotel. I did overhear a couple of people complaining about how loud the music was, but when there are 6 pools to choose from, as well as the 'beach", I thought that was an unreasonable complaint. Especially as they had chosen sunbeds right next to the speakers. I had no issues with the noise level, only that the DJ played the same songs every single day. I asked him to mix it up a bit, which he did, but only for 30 minutes. The snorkelling off the jetty was amazing, and I think I saw a more varied amount of fish here than on any of the trips that I went on. The hotel provides free travel on a mini bus a few times per week to Soho Square, Old Market and Naama Bay but they book up very quickly but if it's fully booked you can always find a taxi outside the hotel. We only had cause to speak to the reception staff a couple of times, and they were always polite and helpful. I had a manicure at the Spa, which I was very happy with. I was there for about an hour and it cost what would convert to £12.00. Bargain. I meant to go back for a massage as I had heard lots of positive things from other guests, but I sadly never got around to it.

All in all, we had a great time again at this hotel and had booked to return later this year...