Tropicana Grand Azure Resort

Very close to the Airport. Piece of advice take a pen to fill in the immigration form you will be given on the plane. Especially if you fly with BA as none of the staff will have pens.
Lovely entrance and reception area. The resorts grounds are well kept and quite lovely during the day and with the lighting at night its almost magical. Good pools with water slides.
The rooms are very basic. After a change of room, the first having a blocked sink and blocked toilet. We were given a room with a nice view of the beach. The TV didn’t work in this room and the toilet constantly ran but still flushed so we thought this was a bonus. Took 48 hours for the hotel to provide a bath plug. Some nights the wind picks up to gale force in Sharm and of course going on the rooms standards the wind shook the Balcony sliding doors to the room all night as if we had a ghoul in the closet.
Advice….. Barter. Or take out a loan. You will be fleeced for all you have in Egypt unless you are prepared. The shop inside the hotel for example charges £30 for suntan cream. No joke.
The food is no way near 5 star. 3 at best. The least said about it the better. The staff are either very helpful or couldn’t give a monkeys. There was no halfway.
Advice..We snorkelled in the sea just outside of the resorts beach off the very long pier they have built and that was amazing. No need to go to any expensive trips.
The kids entertainment in the evening is quite good and the entertainers are certainly enthusiastic.
A wide variety of people from different countries go to this hotel which was refreshing.
All in all, this is NOT a 5 star hotel. I would say 3 at best. environment is very nice, rooms, food and staff all very dubious. In hindsight I should of read reviews and booked with someone else.
Last bit of advise, never book with First choice or Thompson. unless you want disappointment and nothing like what you hoped or were told when you booked. That or contact Abta now. Like we have.

22 readers found this review helpful

Myself and my partner stayed at this hotel for a week at the begining of February 2010. To begin with it took almost 2 hours for our cases to arrive at our rooms after arrival after repeated calls to reception.
When the cases finally arrived, 2 large male members of staff barged there way into our room and stated that they had been to our room twice which was a total lie. We had not left the room since arriving. The timing of the arrival of the cases was unfortunate as my partner had just got our of the shower and was wearing her towel when one of the males demanded she remove it. I told him to leave but he just laughed and stood there until I tipped him - (This was the last thing I wanted to do but we just wanted him and his 'heavy' mate to leave our room).
My girlfriend was in tears after this.
Further more on returning to the UK I found my credit cards have been cloned even after leaving them 'locked' in the safe in our room!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Payments to a clothing shop of £86 in Sharm, not that we ever went into Sharm and a large payment to an construction company was stopped by HSBC.
Females need to be very careful of the male staff at this hotel, unfortunately the two males who came into our room with our cases runied the holiday. This wasnt a case of accepting their culture and their views of females in general, this crossed far beyond that point!!! even though the remainder of the holiday passed without further incident and the hotel itself is nice. I have made a complaint to First Choice and they just said that they do not 'vet' staff at the hotel which is not acceptable!! I have had many holidays with First Choice and always found them to be good but I will never book a holiday with them again and advise others to beware. They are good until things go wrong and then then try to wash their hands of any responsibility. HSBC are conducting an investigation into the card cloning.

6 readers found this review helpful

to start stayed 3 rd to the 10th of feb 2010. first room allocated to us smelt of urine as soon as you opened the door block 4 had to stay there over night as the change of room was a mess also,,, next day at 2.30 had to badger for a room change but we had not unpacked as did not want our cloths to smell of the urine smell in room.. thompson rep not brilliant but ok as new to resort..room changed to block 2 this room was almost clean but had more water leaks in the bathroom than the titanic,,,had to walk over 5 days to reception which is approx 1/2 a mile each way every morning for 5 days to try to get these issuse resolved ...tv did not work either they even told me at reception it had been replced on 1 ocassion ..accomadation at a push is 3 star as no plug for sink or bath which both chipped and damaged tileing in both rooms we ocuppied presume done by local children as chipped groutint awfull......the real concern is guest safety and welfare as no respocibility or care in my opinion...we had a man who chanted out of a note book whilst paceing around the lobby for 2 hours he then came and stood next to my partner whilst i popped to the loo.. i returned asked him to move he did not just chanted louder,,, i then stood in front of him clapped my hands as he seemed to be in a trance the room went quiet except for his chanting which he was shouting at this time /...but niether did reception or security staff do anything at all..my partner asked repeatedly for security so did many others .. we live in a time of suicide bombers ..hotel taxi boy after almost an hour of being asked took the iniciative and asked the man to move.. he closed his book walked off into the complex... lots of women thanked myself for standing up to the man as they were intmidated by his presence,,, the hotel even tho we were assure at 4am in the morning would do a full investigation by 10 am that morning..my partner was terrified crying. she is 44 not a child.. next morning meeting took place no report just a look of contempt by the manager.. the chanter was walking around the lobby chanting whilst we had the meeting they did not even approach him... all in all are you safe in this hotel i felll no isthe answer... a ruined holiday by bad accomadation and staff hotel had been flooded 2 weeks prior not a good expirence..

19 readers found this review helpful

This was our first time in Sharm but our 4 time to Egypt
and found the resort very clean and friendly. All the staff were extremely helpful, kind, curtious and trustworthy.
The complex although quite spread out, bit of walking from the Reception to the beach, was very well maintained and clean, ok there is a train that will take you to the beach if you don't feel like walking and it runs throughout the day.
Pools & Beach - The main pool just outside from the reception is very large, has lots of sunbeds, we had no problem getting one and has a Greek / Lagoon theme with fountains. The beach is at the far end of the complex with sunbeds, toilets, eating/bar close by and a jetty out to sea where you can see lots of exotic fish.
Rooms - were spacious enough for 2 were cleaned daily and fresh linen every day.
Food -There was a different theme everyday and enough choice to suit all palettes and all ages. Never once during our 10 day stay did we suffer with upset stomach.
Tour reps (First Choice) were in the hotel in the morning/evening, were there for any question / queries and were very helpful.
The 4 A La Carte resturants are very good and must be tried whilst there at no extra cost but must be booked the morning before.
The only negative side of the hotel was being asked everyday whilst at the pool was about Spa treatments but no was acknowledged and they left you alone for that day.
Overall it was great holiday in a wonderful location, would definatly go back.

19 readers found this review helpful

The Tropicana Grand Azure is a huge complex as many have already described. I will try not to duplicate what previous reviews have already covered. First and foremost, this is not a 5-star hotel despite what brochures may suggest. It is well below the standard of other 5-star hotels on the Red Sea. I put this down to the all-inclusive nature of the complex which invariably degrades the quality of food, and service, and drink (all local brands). I feel it is the equivalent of a good 3-star hotel in Majorca. Despite its size, the hotel and grounds are immaculate and it is only the bedrooms that disappoint.
One good point about the hotel is the short transfer time from Sharm El Sheikh airport – twenty minutes max – but the downside is that the hotel is directly under the flight path, so aircraft pass directly overhead starting at 5am and continuing until midnight and beyond.
The friendliness of the staff is exceptional. Nothing is a bother when they are asked and they don’t openly tout for tips although gratuities are expected and gratefully received. There are some exceptions but they should not detract from the general level of service.
The management, however, are a different proposition and their greed to make additional money is objectionable. To upgrade from a standard room to a superior room is 10 US$ per person per night – that works out at an additional 280 US$ on the cost of a holiday for two when staying two weeks. As we had already paid the brochure price of £800 each, this additional cost was considered unacceptable.
I should explain that the standard rooms and superior rooms are exactly the same size and have the same facilities and differ only in location and decor. The standard rooms are acceptable and adequate and would meet most visitors’ expectations apart from their location. Even their location could be tolerated if it wasn’t for the problems adjacent to the blocks as I will explain.
The complex has 22 blocks of 2/3-storey buildings (called Clusters). Four of these blocks are categorised as “standard” with the rest being “superior” and above. The superior blocks face inwards into the pool areas and the four standard blocks are located behind the superior rooms and they are right on the boundary walls of the complex and next to the service roads. Immediately beyond the service roads are new hotels at various states of construction. Within only a few yards of our room in Block 21 was a compressor from a building site and that compressor NEVER shut down in the 14-days we stayed in this hotel; it worked 24 hours each day!! I will return to this problem after describing our initial booking-in at reception.
The first room we were allocated had no safe and, because the hotel made it quite clear they would not be held responsible for any losses or theft if the safe wasn’t used, we elected to change rooms. The second room also had no safe despite the hotel’s computer saying it did! The second room also had ants (a previous complaint in this forum). The third room did have a safe but it was just lying on a shelf in the wardrobe and was not secured to the wall. When I queried this with reception they said it was OK!
So in the first two hours of our stay in this hotel we had been allocated three rooms – but all in the same block. We accepted the third room but overnight we realised that the compressor was going to be a major problem for us. Like several others, we then tried to exchange rooms to a quieter location within the complex. Keep in mind that there were 18 other blocks within the grounds and the hotel was just over half-full. And that’s how we found out about the additional charges for changing rooms. It appears that the standard blocks are allocated to some Brits (Thompson and Thomas Cook bookings) and to some Russian guests and I therefore hold both those UK companies negligent in their duty to oversee the hotel’s attitude and to enforce better locations for their guests when adverse conditions prevail. We don’t go on holiday to be housed next to a building site!!
The problem was discussed with the Thomas Cook hotel rep but he was a waste of space. Could he do anything to change the intransigent attitude of management re room allocation – especially as the compressor noise could be negated by moving further away from the hotel periphery? Answer: we had booked a standard room and this is exactly what we had been supplied with. What about the unsecured safe? Answer: the hotel will have to take responsibility if the safe is carried off out of the room. Not the responsibility of Thomas Cook! No complaint raised or volunteered and no feedback to management. He was just not interested in our problems and him being Egyptian probably made him more sympathetic to the hotel than a British rep would have been.
And now for our room experiences: I will point out firstly that blocks 21 and 22 are relatively new as they don’t even feature on the huge complex map in reception. They were built on what had previously been waste land within the hotel perimeter. The quality of the standard room is 3-star status at best. Our bath had been previously damaged in two areas and had been repaired with fibre glass patches. The wash basin had been similarly damaged and had a huge star crack. The bathroom door was hinge-bound and made an awful noise every time the door was closed. This was rectified by jamming a lump of cardboard between the door jamb and frame to stop the woods rubbing against each other. The wardrobe door was similarly hinge-bound against an adjacent shelf and the third day into our holiday three of the four hinges popped out and the door collapsed. Now that was beyond my do-it-yourself inspiration and maintenance had to be called to fix the door back in place.
Neither the bath or washbasin or bidet had a plug and the mechanical levers that had previously acted as plugs had long since been broken. We had to ask the room cleaner for replacements. Would you expect to find a chipped water glass or badly cracked teacup in a 5-star room? We did and these were similarly replaced – but why should we have to ask?
I did mention the compressor and aircraft noise didn’t I? Well thought I, by keeping the balcony door tightly shut at night it may minimise the problem – no such luck as there was a big air gap between door and frame so no effective seal and no noise reduction there.
All this would not have been so irritating if the complex was described as an average 3-star hotel, but it isn’t and even 5-star Egyptian standards should not be this low.
There were a lot of Russian guests during our two weeks here and they outnumbered the Brits – but it was some of the Brits in our block that made late at night/early in the morning a bit of a problem as they noisily made their way back from the bars. Another aspect of all-inclusive that has to be expected I guess, the surfeit of alcohol means boisterous behaviour – so you have been warned!
The food. The variety and quality was good – but after 14 days the sameness of the variety was very evident. A lot has been mentioned in these forums about the four theme restaurants that are included in the all-inclusive package: Chinese, Italian, Mediterranean, and fish restaurants. We tried them all and only the Italian restaurant served a very good meal – the other three were ok, but only ok. The menus never change and it is the same limited number of choices each and every night. The meal times are set out in two sittings each night – but it was fairly clear that they expected everyone to arrive at the start of the sitting rather than a time of your choosing. Service was fast, too fast, and does not allow for a relaxing meal despite what the theme write-ups may infer.
I give you a good example: the Chinese had a five course menu that started with soup, then mixed deep-fried appetisers, then salad, followed by main course and desert. Sounds good. Orders are taken for everyone in the restaurant and delivered from the kitchen in the same way on huge trays. The soup, appetisers, and salad are all served together and laid out in front of you so better start eating! The main course was soon to follow. Ours was delivered before the starter dishes had been removed from the table. A guy opposite me was still eating his salad when his main course was set down in front of him. Totally unacceptable in my view and please don’t suggest that they be told to hold back and give you some breathing space; your meal may be taken back to the kitchen but there it would remain until served.
We have stayed in several Egyptian hotels in the past but never had this type of “efficiency”. Our recommendation would be to stick with the main buffet restaurant for the majority of the meals where you can eat at your own pace and with a greater variety of food; albeit self-service.
However, all the above pales into insignificance when compared to the havoc and damage done by the mother of all storms that hit us one night. This complex was not unique, it has to be said. Most other hotels were similarly affected. The main reception lobby has a huge circular seating area and this was under water. The electricity failed and the majority of rooms were flooded. The tiled floor of our room was totally under water and there was nowhere for it to run away – and we were on the first floor!! Imagine the scene: 2am and needing to visit the toilet; having to leave our bed (like a little island) and paddle through one inch of water to get to the bathroom, and then back again with cold wet feet and nothing to dry them on (the towels having futilely been used to block the water coming into the room from the hallway and from the balcony).
The polished marble floors in the rooms when combined with water is a lethal mix as evidenced by a couple we met. She had got up in the night, not knowing that the room had been flooded and immediately slipped and damaged her spine. The doctor charged her 160 Euros for injections and pain killing gel. Would the hotel cover the cost of this? Not a chance as that’s what insurance is for – but what about the 60 Euros excess??? Another example of cynical greedy management.
The staff did wonderfully to get things back to normal in as short a time as possible. Did we get any apology from management for the inconvenience? No. Did our Thomas Cook rep come around to see if we were ok or needed to make insurance claims and the like? No chance. In all our years of travelling we have never met a representative who is so disinterested in his job or his guests. We did, however, get letters through our door trying to persuade us to go on his excursions!!
Apart from this aberration in the weather, January is a fine time to visit the Red Sea as the temperature is good and the hotels are not at capacity so finding a sunbed anywhere is not a problem. Would I recommend you book into this complex? Not at brochure prices. If you can get a good deal then go for it but at brochure prices there are much better hotels available on the Red Sea. Also be prepared to pay additionally for a superior room if your standard room is next to a building site! Pound for pound this hotel is disappointing and not value for money.

24 readers found this review helpful

My self and two other friends stayed at Tropicana for two weeks and though the place was lovely and we never suffered with any illness the whole trip was ruined by the Egyptain men.
And I don't mean those outside the hotel despite the fact that a taxi driver stopped by our group and requested personal favours from us.
After a night out to the local club we returned back to the hotel and made our way back to our room but was stopped by one of the pool men who also requested personal favours from us.
Most of the staff were wonderful and very respectful but there were some that once they discovered three girls staying on their own make it clear they are only thinking of one thing and believe you are willing to give it to you.
If you travel to Egpty I suggest you go in a large group if you are all girls or make sure you travel with a man.
I don't want to ruin anyone's future hoilday here but at times it made myself feel dirty and uncomfortable.

22 readers found this review helpful

I have only just got back from Grand Azure hotel, i went with me and my boyfriend. We are a young couple, who loved it, the hotel was amazing, the entertament was a let down. There was nothink to do in the hotel at night, but it is a short shuttle bus ride to namma bay which is free, there they have great bars and clubs, hada wkd night. The hotel during the day was brilliant, loads going on, the pools are amazing 3 to choose from, have to get down earlier to get a sunbed thou. All had swim up bars, the beach is brilliant, the fish are amzing. Best holiday i ahve ever had the food is lovely in the hotel.Would defently go back.

13 readers found this review helpful

I really enjoyed my stay at this hotel. The food was great in the 3 main a la carte restaurants, the chinese was my personal favourite but the arabian and italian were still very nice. The buffet restaurant was ok, im quite a picky eater but i always found something to eat including fresh pasta cooked for me.
The bars were always busy but that was to be expected. You generally got served within 2-3 minutes or 5 being the most.
The pools were brill, i really liked them as they all has various depths. The fountain main pool was my favourite as it was the biggest and i liked the swim up bar. They were all very warm aswell but thats no wonder when the temps outside are 45degrees.
The rooms were fine, very clean, tidy and little extras like toiletries and tea+coffee making facilities were good. TV with english channels, good air con, free safe and fresh towels everyday.
The only main annoyances i had was the evening entertainment or lack of it and the fact people got up at 6am to resevre sunbeds when the hotel stated you were not allowed to reserve them. The entertainment was poor, you had to make your own or get the free shuttle bus into naama bay, taxis onyl cost 50egyptian pounds back (£5.50).
The hotel is in nabq bay which has a mcdonalds, kfc, starbucks, clothes shops, restaurants, and a big metro supermarket.
The beach is nice plenty of loungers unlike the pools and the jetty was long so you could see plenty of fish on your walk along it. The sea didnt get very deep until it dropped off and got very deep were the diving was done.
I would deffinately go back to this hotel although i would probablt like to upgrade to VIP as you get your own restaurant, upgraded spirits and a few nice extras.

12 readers found this review helpful

I stayed at this hotel with my boyfriend for a week in May and we had a fab time! the hotel is spotless with loads to do water polo, valley ball, darts, yoga but this is by the active pool (nearest the beach) the other 2 pools didnt seem to have any activitys (i feel this my be why some reviews say there is no entertainment) the entertainment staff round this pool were fab! they worked from 9am till 3 am some days and were always happy to help( even on there well earned breaks they would stop and check u were ok! the food in the hotel offered somethink for every1! from typical english to egyptian and italian.only had one problem with one waiter who would not leave me alone! the rooms were a good size we had a garden view.the black house disco is free but the drinks are expensive but they are in sharm!
tips
*always get a taxi from the hotel limo service or the shuttle bus on a evening! do not get in a local taxi after dark i honestly thought i was going to die!
* try the a la carte resturants
*go on the quad biking over the desert
*tip well and the service is fantastic we were always first to be served.
*be aware the hotel is on a very large scale and when its hot its abit of a trek.
the hotel is really nice and i am a trael agent and very hard to please at the end of the day you get what you pay for and this hotel is well worth abit extra. i have already booked to return in 2010!

7 readers found this review helpful

Can I just start with a positive note. The Staff at this Hotel are fabulous people.Now the rest. This is NOT a 5* even though it is a nice Hotel. Try staying at the Jollie Ville Golf Resort, that's a 5 * for sure. The Entertainment is nil unless you want to play cards. We got no Coffee for 2 days, no milk powder for another two days. No towels on 2 occasions.Air Conditioning broke down and it took 4 calls and then a call to the Duty Manager before they got organised. No soap some days. There was no drinks in the fridge, not even water, which is standard normally in a/i Hotels we have stayed in before. We had a good Holiday, but left feeling if it wasn't for the hard work of the Staff after the amount of Staff being cut from 14 to 7 in the Dining Rooms etc, the Hotel would be a disaster. We spoke to 3 different couples who had stayed previously, one 5 times, one 4 times, and one 3 times, all say the standards have dropped and they won't be back. This they say is since Tropicana took over.Most days at Breakfast and Dinner there were no tables to sit at, but the guys were very quick to reset one for us because we became very friendly with the Staff. Also very often there were no plates, cutlery etc. This reads bad because it is a nice Hotel, just feel I am writing this on behalf of the Staff who said it would help them if I complained to the Manager, which I intend doing if it helps the guys. We have been to Egypt 5 times, but would not ever stay at this Hotel again unless they got their act to-gether. If you are planning a stay in Grand Azure, you will enjoy it, but just don't expect a 5* if you usually stay in one.