I’ve held back posting a review of the Sofitel Cairo El Gezirah in Egypt and if you follow me on twitter you know why – we had Problems; yes Problems with a capital P! But I’ve decided to do my review to show the good times and the bad times of our hotel stay.
So I will set the scene – we arrived at 8pm at the hotel, we hadn’t really slept the night before (as we were at Abu Simbel) so we were officially shattered. As you would expect, we wanted to whizz through the check in process, get to our suite, shower and then sleep.
As I’m a Platinum Member of the Accor Group, G asked if there was any chance of an upgrade (this is sometimes possible if the hotel has availability) and we were told by the receptionist that this was possible. Let’s just say another member of staff came to the reception area and they were talking about us (never assume that westerners can’t speak Arabic!) and there was a lot of eye rolling about our request. At this point I said to G, let’s ask for a refund and pop across to the Intercontinental Hotel where we’ve had good service and stayed before.
Our new suite wasn’t ready so we were shown to the club lounge until the room was available; this took longer than thought (only by 15 mins). We were shown to our rooms but this was when things just got annoying…our bags took forever to turn up! (this is the reason why I always carry my own bags to the room). And then a stranger opened our suite door, popped his head in and then shut the door again – G took our cards to the Club Lounge and asked them to be reprogrammed. It was a shambolic evening and we were tired; not a great mix.
So here is my little ray of sunshine….
After a number of hours of sleep, I tweeted the Sofitel Twitter account the following morning and explained the problems via DM. Within 30 mins we had a meeting set up with the GM of Sofitel Egypt. I do have high expectations of ANY 5 star hotel – you charge mega bucks and I expect great service; they go hand in hand. Sofitel handled our issues extremely well and all our issues were investigated with speed.
So here are a few photos of the room; not to my normal standard as you can probably tell the mood I was in when I was taking the photos!
The lounge in the Opera Suite…
…the bedroom…
…the bathroom…
…our welcome gift – there were a few of these as the GM wasn’t pleased with the quality of the initial one sent to our room!
My favourite thing about the Opera Suite were the balconies (yes there was more than one) making it the perfect place to take sunset photos over Cairo! We could even see something in the distance…can you spot them?
I always enjoy a breakfast at the Sofitel as they offer some great gluten free breakfast options! G thought my choice was slightly weird but when in Egypt….
And for dinner we headed to Kebabgy which is apparently one of the best restaurants in Cairo; they serve the best bread (and yes I tasted it and it was full of gluten but oh so good).
Would I recommend the Sofitel Cairo El – I would like to say yes however I’m not and this is the reason why; the final nail in the coffin!
If you suffer from asthma like me you know how important it is to be on a non-smoking floor (it can trigger off attacks in asthmatics hence we were located on a non-smoking floor) but unfortunately the hotel when it’s extremely busy does place smoking guests on non-smoking floors. Something that I found out on our last night and was confirmed by the reception staff on checking out. We unfortunately had some smokers placed in the room beside ours and it quite literally stunk out our room, thank goodness G managed to close the doors between the lounge and bedroom otherwise I could have become rather sick.
I did expect a lot more from Sofitel Cairo; after I complained the service was definitely improved however I don’t expect to have to complain to get the service that I think should be provided to everyone staying at the hotel.
The GM refunded our first nights accommodation and also provided a free meal at the restaurant – I wasn’t after a refund or a free meal, I just wanted the service and loyalty program to recognise our loyalty to their hotel chain (we had stayed with them the whole time we were in Egypt also). I will be using the refunded money to book a spa treatment at the Sofitel London in the future so that the cash is back in their pockets.
xx
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