Hotel Premier Le rêve

The hotel is located 25 km south of Hurghada, in a new resorts development area name Sahl Hasheesh (for the Google Earth users, coordinates are: Latitude 27° 1'27.96"N – Longitude 33°53'16.41"E). Note that Google Earth picture is old and do not reflect today’s area’s development but gives a rough idea about the location. To assist readers to get a better idea about hotel and location, I added pictures to Google Earth Panoramio.

Some may consider Sahl Hasheesh too much isolated and away from civilization but it turns to be such nice and quiet place to stay, perfect if you are looking after de-stressing, relaxing or simply enjoying sunny and easy vacations. For shopping’s lovers the hotel location is not really a problem because the hotel provides daily free shuttles to downtown and to the various Hurghada freshly built shopping-centers.

In the following column we will share more specific details but the general feeling after a week at Premier le Rêve is very good and we highly appreciated staff’s devotion to make everything possible to respond to our expectations and make our stay comfortable. We had no problem to communicate and if that is correct some of the staff might not be English experts, we always get understood and even surprise by some of them eager to improve their English, taking notes in a small booklet roomed in their back-pocket. Guest service agents were very polite, always available to answer all of questions, accessible and taking care of the small details that make the difference between; a good-excellent and outstanding-great hotels.

Pictures/Videos to hotel review (Click picture to enlarge!)

The hotel offers many options to enjoy 24/24 snacks, lunch, diners and others and, in a week, we haven’t had the opportunity to try all of the available options.

As for the entitle hotel, the main restaurant “Turquoise” is well decorated with painting and sculptures and serves a large variety of foods. It has three main buffets; one for entrées, a second for desserts and the third one for main-courses. There is also an interesting booth full of many different kinds of bred and pastries – and at the center of the room a small island offering a good selection of warm beverages as tea, coffee. The variety of entrées and desserts is good and the Chef very creative. We enjoyed the delicate preparations mixing flavors and had hard time to retain ourselves to exceed our stomach capacity.

As part of the “all inclusive” package we book diners at three of the four “A la carte” restaurants. We missed the Miyako Sushi Bar because we wanted to enjoy one more evening at the main restaurant. In terms of offering our preference goes to the Italian “Bella” but we had nothing to complain about the Asian restaurant “Mandarin” and seafood restaurant nearby the pool.

What was really nice at diner was that guest dress-up and ladies were all beautiful and gorgeous, adding a piece of charm to an already charming atmosphere.

Our son Pierre was too busy to enjoy snorkeling, navigating with its brand new floating-inflated Boeing 747 to join the Kids’ Club but we attended a magic-show organized for kids and performed by a professional magician and could say that; the animation team ahead of the kids’ club was very enthusiastic and motivated to keep kids busy while parents relaxing and enjoying the sun.

In line with the hotel style, entertainments are of quality and musicians performing few times at the pool-bar during the day and in the evening at the main-lobby, outdoor terrace and at main restaurant. No American big shows but all performances we attended were good and professional.

As I wrote in preamble we were not looking after disco but, for the disco-fans, the animation team organizes shuttle bus to another hotel having disco.

The hotel has small recreational areas with ping-pong, baby-foot, pool table and various games you can borrow from the animation team.

It might sounds anecdotic to add “staying connected” under this chapter but, sign of the times, it was interesting to see many guests bringing laptop and micro-portable-computers to public areas to Skype with their relatives, send e-mails and photos while in middle of desert. Thanks to broadly deployed high-speed WIFI internet access freely provided by the hotel in all public areas and in every room via cable connected to an IP Phone. As well, hidden in gigantic fake palm-trees, outside the hotel, two radio-bases stations make possible to call anywhere in the world with same quality as if at home.

Our room in general:
Located at the third floor, nearby the reception, 1304 was a nice room composed of an entry with large wardrobe, a bathroom and a bedroom with a balcony facing the main pool and the sea. The bedroom was middle-large, well decorated, hosting two queen-beds, flat screen TV, an IP Phone embedding a cable to connect PC to a high-speed internet and a large safe-box big enough to host 17” laptop, digital cameras, valuables and others.

The bathroom includes all moderns’ equipments you may expect in such category of hotel (shower, bathtub, double-sink, toilet and bidet) and is large if we compare with many other similar places we visited earlier. The separate shower has an automatic water-mixer preventing too warm shower that, as we read in some posts, some consider trimmed a bit too cold, which I tend to agree but my wife to disagree (all about personal perception). The bathtub was large but nothing we have really used during our stay. Regarding the bathtub we can only say that, in our room, because the marble-edges not perfectly leaning towards the inner basin, even with high cautions, taking a warmer shower in the bathtub results systematically in water leakage on the floor but nothing dramatic.

The beds were very comfortable and the mattresses of very good quality. However, after the first night, because my wife and I are used to a king-bed at home, we felt a bit squeezed when our son enjoyed sleeping across its monumental queen-bed. We check if possible to change room and to move to one having a king-bed and a spare-bed for our son but due to high occupancy it was not possible to switch the same day and we decided to stick to 1304. Willing to offer a plan B solution, our housekeeper suggested merging the two queen-bed turning into a super mega-king-bed with plenty of room for all three. Our son was very impressed by the result and after some minor adjustments we all slept as happy-babies for the rest of our vacations.

We appreciated the attention brought by the housekeeper to ease our stay and make it good and; one afternoon when coming back from the pool, we had a nice surprise to find a wonderful swan wrapped with towels and cover to sit enthroned on our bed.

Room cleanliness absolutely perfect:
Reshuffling beds was a good opportunity for us to check, what some reported in other post as negative point: room cleanliness. As we all know; that is under the bed that the famous dust bunnies usually hidden themselves. Sorry for other posts but we have to honestly say that was absolutely clean, well vacuumed without any sign of dust bunnies crawling as we moved the beds around nor at any other hidden places we could access. In general everything was perfectly cleaned and maintained. The housekeeper regularly replaces followers and really paid attention to details.

Room quietness good but room for small improvements:
Despite the part of the hotel in operation was >98% full; probably because built with traditional material (concrete and bricks), the room-to-room isolation seems to be very good. We haven’t been disturbed, at any time, by neighbor watching TV in the middle of the night, loudly discussions or flushing toilets.

However, the last two nights we noticed, something other posts reported, noise coming from the corridor (i.e. people talking, loafing, etc.) was abnormally high. I have no expertise in this area but that is something hotel quality manager needs to address, either by adding a separation-door isolating the bedroom from the corridor, or maybe by applying a simple rubber-joint sealing the air-gap between the door, which is massive enough to normally provide good noise-reduction, and its frame could be enough.

Another detail related to source of noise we noticed while on the balcony or in the bedroom was the evening outdoor music. Starting late in the morning, during daytime the level of the outdoor music is low and very acceptable but, for some reasons, in the evening the level increase a bit too much and for too long. The music stops at 23:00, which for families with kids nearby the loudspeakers might be disturbing. We couldn’t say we have been annoyed by this but ending the music at 22:00 and reducing its level by half wouldn’t affect the ambiance and to be a good compromise between creating a nice ambiance and guest quietness, making everybody happy.

As writen in previous chapters, the hotel provides a very good access to Internet and is covered by a radio-base station nearby the hotel.

April-May is the best season if you like warm without burning.

Be ready to dress-up for diner, it so lovely.