Sofitel Karnak Luxor

We arrived promptly at our boat, Viking II, which is part of Discover Egypt Cruises, on the Monday evening. The boat was clean and the staff were friendly. Rooms were adequately furnished although the tiles in the bathroom were in need of replacement. (some were cracked). The food on the boat was very good. A bit of a con mind to be told you are on a cruise and then to spend the first two days docked in Luxor whilst you went to Luxor temple and the Valley of the Kings and also Karnak temple. Finally started to sail on the Wednesday afternoon. We were then met with having to pay £7.00 per person for tips for the drivers of the coaches. This was not really an option as we were told by the tour reps that they had been paying this on our behalf since the beginning. So we gave £28.00 over for that. The plunge pool on the boat was in bad need of repair, with cracked tiles and a cloudy look about it, which we discovered was the grout on the tiles, which lifted when you stood on them! Still we were enjoying the tours and the aircon in the rooms was a welcome relief. The tours however did not even remotely resemble the examples that were given on the itinerary when we booked the holiday. Thursday was the dreaded day. My husband spent the whole night being sick and I was fighting him for the toilet with severe stomach cramps and you can imagine what else. We spent the day in bed on Thursday and consequently missed a full days tours. The following day our two children went down with the same illness. We spoke to our tour guides who said it was because we were English and not used to the heat and we had overeaten. Which okay would have been a good enough explanation had the rest of the boat not been down with the same thing. Friday was luckily a day at sail so although we were all in bed still ill we missed no tours. We had done everything we were advised to do, drank plenty of bottled water, drank no alcohol and ate very little. Unfortunately the stomach upset was to stay with us for the rest of our holiday. One of the other holidaymakers were diagnosed with bacterial dysentery. We were aghast when on our last day we were advised that it was recommended that we pay £2.00 per person per day tip for the tour guides and also the same for the ship staff. This would have meant for my family of four they were expecting over £100 tip to be left! We went to our hotel on the following Monday. It was a relief to be off the boat as on the last day all the passengers had the use of 3 toilets, not very good when we are all unable to stop bowel movements!!
The hotel I have to say was fantastic, the rooms were beautiful.
We asked the rep to speak to someone from Discover Egypt as we felt that the situation on the boat could have been handled better. Everybody felt that there was something that had made all of us poorly which needed to be investigated. Our tour rep advised us that the Manager would speak to us but not until Saturday. So on the Saturday there was approximately 20 angry people sitting in reception. Some could not attend as they were still too poorly. We asked what Discover Egypt intended to do about our complaint and we were told that the Manager would go back and speak to us again on the Sunday. We all felt as though we had basically lost a week’s holiday because of feeling poorly. On the Sunday the manager didn’t turn up. The holiday rep came on his behalf and said that Discover Egypt would not do any thing until we returned home. We were all severely disappointed that the Manager didn’t have the courage to face us himself!
We requested that we could keep our rooms until the late afternoon on the Monday so that we would not have the problem and embarrassment of using public toilets when we were still poorly. They were not happy with this and only eventually agreed when we all refused to leave our rooms at noon.
This was our final holiday together as a family because my daughter is now 18. It could have been so much better.
We were advised that discover Egypt would contact us on our return home. (beginning of August). We are still awaiting their reply. What a shame.
My tips, most of the tours can be done from the hotels in Luxor. Don’t be bullied into paying for tips unless you are happy with the amount they are requesting, if you are not, pay what you want. Take plenty of diarrhoea tablets and anti-sickness tablets.