Tropicana Grand Azure Resort

3 readers found this review helpful

we went to tropicana grand azure in december the weather was perfect hot during the day but the sun goes down at 3 - 3.30 dark by 4 and it gets a bit cold on a night so i would take a jacket of a thick cardie , the pools are freezing during the day so we did not get to use them only one heated small pool for the kids .the food in hotel was lovely plenty of all different foods from burger and chips ,freshly made pizza , to chinese, fresh fish you will not go hungry. rooms where lovely nice and clean the only thing is the bed are not comfy at all unless you like a very hard mattress staff where lovely can not fault this hotel .we are going back in november 2011

large hotel set in fantastic grounds. room was spacious and always kept clean. there are many pools but only 1 that is heated on saying that our group (16 of us) prefered the waterfalls pool even if it was cold. breakfast buffet was superb, only ate from snack places for lunch and then back for evening buffet. if you like foreign foods this is ideal a different meal every night, german, italian etc. i only eat english food but there was always something i could eat. waiters were friendly and always keen to help. nowhere is waiter service but quite often if you had alot of drinks to carry the barmen would bring them over for you. this hotel is best for large groups or families. children are adored and continually made a fuss of. the only downside with pushchairs is that there are not enough ramps to get around the hotel. the only other fault i could find was there wasn't enough toilets around the complex. going out of season made it so it wasn't too busy which meant you could always get a game of pool or table tennis but at peak time this might not be possible. our group thoroughly enjoyed this hotel.

1 reader found this review helpful

We have just returned from a week staying here. There were some very positive aspects to the week...the rooms are large and comfortable and kept beautifully clean, the coffee in the lobby is good (if you are prepared to wait for it), the hotel entertainment team do their best, lovely long jetty for walking out to see the fish. We were there when swimming was banned due to previous shark attacks so the intended snorkelling didn't happen. This left us spending longer actually using the hotel facilities far more than we would have normally done, the swimming pools were lovely but too cold to swim in and by the end of the week we were bored and ready to get home. The problem with the hotel is that it is too big for it's own good. There were not quite enough sunbeds around, there was always the challenge of finding a table in the main restaurant and there was always cutlery missing. Foraging for food became a major challenge too...we soon got the hang of the buffet but it's tedious having to get up in between courses for things you've forgotten or the next course. Our main concern though was that there were no hand washing facilities available as you entered the restaurant and so you knew that hundreds of dirty hands had been using the serving spoons before yours....a bit of a shock when you have come off of a lovely cruise ship the previous week with hand washing given prime importance. No wonder people get stomach upsets when they come here. There were not many British people at our hotel (bearing in mind this is a large holiday village with thousands of guests) which can make you feel a bit vulnerable...large contingents of Russian families there who don't queue and are on the whole a bit loud. We wouldn't stay here again...the hotel wasn't bad but only average...there must be better elsewhere.

2 readers found this review helpful

Tropicana Grand Azure 5 star luxury, sorry no this hotel would struggle to reach 3.5 star. Don’t get me wrong I have visited Egypt every year for the past 10 years and know what star standard Egyptian hotels are.
I have read many reviews saying that the reception staff are rude and unhelpful, well we found them to be polite and helpful.
We booked in and were given a room in block 1 next to the beach, very nice room if a bit tired. The first day at about 7.30 the gardeners started to water the grass. God almightily the smell was terrible. They must be using water from the septic tanks which are overwhelmed by the number of guests.
I am told over 2000 guest stay at this hotel complex, far too many for the facilities. Find a seat? not normally unless you pay the 30€ per person per day for VIP wrist band. We normally found a seat in the restaurant but not at the terrace bar or reception bar they were always full.
Most days on the beach if you get there after 10.00 you would find no loungers available. The food at the beach bar was quite good but 10 out of the 14 days we stayed the bar ran out of beer or red wine (5 star?) The reception bar also ran out of drinks half way through most nights. The restaurant ran out of glasses for drinks.
The service in the restaurant was very poor. We always had to go to the bar and get our own drinks, we never at any time got waiter service at our table. If you wanted to eat outside at breakfast time you had to set the table yourself. The waiter just stood and watched you.
We love Egypt and will still continue to holiday there every winter but we will never stay at the Grand azure again.
Too many guest for the facilities
Never enough seats or tables at night
Service in the restaurant very poor
The smell every morning in the gardens
All in all a very poor hotel over rated.

6 readers found this review helpful

The reception and bedrooms are of a high standard, both having effective air conditioning at no extra cost, but take your own hairdryer. All the staff were efficient and attentive and for a very small tip went the extra mile. The pool area was of a high standard with plenty of good quality sunbeds and a towel service. We sampled the speciality restaurants and the food and service was good but the menue was limited. For the main canteen, sorry, restaurant, things were different. If you expect 5 star food here you will be disappointed, it is a culinery desert. However if food quality is a low priority then you would probably be ok. As for the beach area, I have thrown better quality loungers and matressess on the tip. A good jetty is provided to get you out to the reef and the marine life is brilliant. Would I go back? Probably yes despite all the querks.

4 readers found this review helpful

A group of ten of us went on the 22nd July it was by far one of the best destinations I have ever been too. The staff and the accomodation was first class. The food was 10/10 there is nothing that I feel I could fault.Different menus every night plus plenty of restuarants to choose from.We will definitly being going back next year and would recommend to anyone.Make sure you do the trips on the boat they were fantastic , dolphind, sharks and the coral reef sights I will never forget.The hotel staff were absolutly fabulous very friendly and did not mither you. One thing I would suggest is if you are a football fan be sure to take some old shirts with you they love English football shirts.

7 readers found this review helpful

We have just come back from a 2 week stay at the Tropicana Grand Azure, Sharm El Sheikh. We travelled as a party of 5, which included myself, my husband and 6 year old son and my parents. This was mine and my husbands first experience of 4/5 Star All Inclusive. My parents have travelled to many 4/5 Star All Inclusive Hotels in the past.
Hotel Reception/Grounds & Hotel Rooms
When you first walk into the Hotel Reception Area, you think Wow, it is absolutely stunning. As you walk to the rooms through the grounds, you think how lovely it looks. The problems start when you walk into your rooms!! When we arrived, we were taken to our room, it was extremely small and it looked very tired. My parents were in a room at the other side of the hotel which was approximately a 10-15 minute walk (it is a big complex and I probably wouldn't recommend it for someone with mobility difficulties). We had to pay £173 for the three of us to upgrade to a room nearer to my parents (apparently this was very cheap, but we were told the reason we were so far apart was because of the way the holiday had been booked in the UK)!! We moved rooms on the second day. Whilst the second room was much more spacious, the furnishings were very tired and in my opinion are in need of a refurbishment. We had no hot water in the rooms 5 days before our holiday ended, it had previously only been lukewarm, I had to ring twice to ask if there was a problem with the water. Miraculoulsy, the water then became hot for the last 4 days of the holiday. The air conditioning in our room had a problem, it went up to 27 degrees, again it took me 2 attempts to get somebody to come and look at it, they seemed to have mended it only for it to start doing the same thing on the last day, by this time I couldn't be bothered!!
Location
The location of the hotel is excellent, you are only a 10 minute walk away from the small centre of Nabq Bay where you will find a few bars/shops etc and you are only 15/20 minutes away in a taxi to Naama Bay. There is a hotel shuttle bus but it drops you off approximately a 10-15 minute walk from the centre of Naama Bay.
Swimming Pools
The swimming pools on first appearance look lovely, however, in my opinion, the cleanliness of the pools is debatable!! I was assured that the pools were cleaned daily, however, the bottom of the pool that we used constantly felt gritty, there were constantly plastic cups from the pool bar floating about in the water and on occasion there were spoons and cups in the water where children had been playing with them!! There were 2 incidents where someone had an accident in the the pool, the first time (which was in the childrens section of the pool) they simply scooped it to the side, put a plastic cup over it and left it there for about 15/20 minutes!! The second incident was in the main part of the pool, again it took 15/20 minutes for anyone to come, the eventually came with a net and a holidaymaker ended up picking the excrement up with the net because the pool boys wouldn't get in the water!!!! Disgusting to say the least. On neither occasion were the pools closed!! The pool that we used to sit at had one big water slide and a smaller childrens slide in the kids section of the pool. The supervision of the slides was an absolute joke, on a couple of occasions my son nearly got knocked down the stairs of the big slide due to bigger children pushing him out of the way. This also happened on the childrens slide, children who were probably 12/13 years of age were playing on the slides which were designed for a maximum age of 7 years. When you tell the pool boys, they either don't understand what you are saying or aren't interested. You couldn't reserve sunbeds around the pool between 7am-9am, this is fine if somebody tells you!! If you want to reserve sunbeds you have to sit with them until 9am, if you leave them the pool manager will come round and take off your towels and the pool boys will then give your sunbeds to someone else. This caused many arguments around the pool (this happened at all 3 swimming pools on site), it just caused stress that you really didn't need on holiday.
Main Facilities
The restaurant had 2 levels, we generally went upstairs as we found the staff friendliness and service was much better than downstairs. The staff in the downstairs restaurant in our first week were quite rude and ignorant, however, the second week the staff changed and were much better. The main problem with the main restaurant (downstairs) was at meal times they would frequently run out of coffee cups, saucers, spoons and glasses at the bar!! They would also be more concerned with laying tables for the next meal (ie at lunchtime they would be setting tables for the evening meal), they would start doing this at about 2pm, bearing in mind lunch didn't finish until 3pm!! You would often get taken to dirty tables and it would take forever for them to clear it and set it. Again, not really 4 star plus. The food quality was good and the variety was good. We only visited the Italian A La Carte, the restaurant is set out beautifully, the food is lovely, service is excellent, portions could probably do with being a little bit bigger. The beach bar where you could get pizza, pasta, chips, burger etc were good, no complaints. The lobby bar in the hotel is where the main reception is, lovely, air-conditioned, the only problem being you could never get a seat. There was an additional outside area which again was always very busy, other than that bar, the only other bars on site that were open were the Billiard Bar at the Dolphin Bar and the Terrace Bar outside the main restaurant. We would generally go to the terrace bar, however, we would constantly be drinking out of plastic cups as they had no glasses, not my idea of 4 star plus, it made your drinks taste funny. We discovered towards the end of the holiday that they often did have glasses but didn't give them out as it meant they had to collect them and wash them. We had to start asking for glasses!!!! Again, the staff at this bar were not always the most polite!!
Entertainment
The entertainment that we saw left a lot to be desired, the singers that we saw couldn't sing, entertainment would be advertised and then wouldn't happen!! We weren't impressed with the entertainment programme at all. They had a huge ampitheatre, however, all I ever saw it used for was Mini Disco and silly games for about 30 minutes an evening.
Overall, as a family we had a good holiday, however, this was our first taste of 4/5 star all inclusive, we had hoped it would be a more memorable experience than it was. The hotel has so much potential but is failing on the basics of good service!! I would visit Sharm El Sheikh but I would not go back to the Tropicana Grand Azure and I wouldn't recommend it to friends. In my opinion, this holiday was not worth the money that it cost!! It was a huge disappointment for all of our party.

5 readers found this review helpful

My husband, me and my sister have just got back from a two week stay at this hotel and after an initial hiccup with the accomadation ( we were persuaded to stay at the sister hotel Tropicana Azure Club across the road for two nights as the "Grand" was over booked). When we got back to the "Grand" we were upgraded to V.I.P status and were eventually given, after a lot of bartering,(We had requested rooms near the reception area as my sister has difficulty walking. There are a lot of steps/ramps at this hotel) junior suites with pool views about three blocks from reception & a fully stocked mini-bar every day. The only fault I could find with the room was the hairdryer, basically just a tube. We have nothing but praise for the staff, they all work very hard to ensure that you enjoy your stay and nothing is too much trouble. Even the gardeners are friendly and helpful and always warned us to be careful when they had been watering the gardens because the paths and steps could be quite slippery when wet. They liked to chat as it helps improve their english. The food, it's true, does get very repetative but, on saying that it does tend to in any AI hotel. The evening entertainment left a lot to be desired, especially the patio area outside reception. Most nights it was a duo, a man and woman, (neither of them could sing)but we had a giggle at their efforts! We did walk to the amphitheatre one night and we weren't impressed with that either, but as I say we only checked it out for one night. One word of warning though, a lot of people were out at 5.30 in the morning putting their towels out. If the pool manager walked around and saw them he and other pool staff would remove them. If you stayed on your sunbed until 7am when the restaurants opened for breakfast you were fine. The three of us all took an early morning cuppa down and enjoyed watching the sun come up, best part of the day! The rooms and grounds ( the gardeners were hard at it when i went out on the balcony about 5am a couple of mornings)are kept to a very high standard, linen & towels were changed daily, many thanks to Mohammad our housekeeper who did a great job on our rooms. On the downside, the main pool is huge. Most other hotels use a hoovering type of device to clean the bottom of the pool but, i assume because of the vast area, they didn't here and needless to say you get debris at the bottom. Also whilst we were there some of the grating around the edge of the pool, usually where the water goes into a channel to go back through the filtration system, was removed because it was broken and they cemented in the channel! The only way that we could think the water was being filtered was through the two fountains in the pool. The walk along the kilometre long jetty was enjoyable even though it was in the heat of the afternoon ( temps averaged between 40 & 49 degrees)as there was a nice breeze off the sea, we saw a few tropical fish, not as many as we thought we would. If you do this walk take a bottle of water from your room or the restaurant with you, they only do cups from a water cooler at the beach bar.
I would especially like to thank Mohammad 321 (Dusty Bin)the Reception Manager for all his efforts to get us rooms that were acceptable to us, and Ayman, the Thomas Cook rep who was very helpful and couldn't do enough to ensure we were happy. I would also like to say a very big thank you for his honesty to one of the Bell boys (another mohammad, I think) who returned the $20 I had mistakenly given him as a tip, I thought it was a $1 bill! and all the other staff for making our stay a very enjoyable one. We are hoping to go back again in 2011.

6 readers found this review helpful

I have just return from my holiday of 10 days at the Grand Azure which I could of easily stayed for two weeks. Found the hotel clean, friendly. Room was cleaned everyday to a very high standard - i have stayed at many hotels of 5 star and have never had just a clean room like we did. Swimmming pools were clean, always managed to get sunbeds. Food was lovely and hot. I would highly recommend this hotel. Staff are all very welcoming.
I will be returning to this hotel.

1 reader found this review helpful

We stayed at the Tropicana Grand Azure Resort in May, we have 2 young children and we would highly recommend the only thing that we found not very helpful was the reception staff very rude and not very helpful. The main restaurant was fine, with very nice waiters very helpful the restaurant that we liked most was the italian i would highly recommend you visit. Me and my husband both got funny tummies but nothing bad, so overall we enjoyed and would go back..People go on holiday and want to pick holes in holidays just go and enjoy x