The first thing that struck us at the reception wa...

The first thing that struck us at the reception was the intense smell of fried food rather than a pleasant mix of Arabian aromas. Our room was large with a view to the sea, but naturally we had paid extra for these commodities. First dinner experiences were utterly disappointing. The selection of food was very limited and the food itself lacked any taste. Meats were overcooked, the choice of fish and seafood was missing and the rest was tasteless. Tables were not properly cleaned and feeling sticky and cutlery was either lacking entirely or cutlery sets incomplete.

We comfortably slept through our first night but were rudely awakened by a scratching noise of cleaning/working staff at 0900 attempting to clean or fix something. Being our first night, we had not yet recovered from jet lag thus 0900 was 0500 for us.

Grabbing breakfast was literally that.. a grab. Tables were scarce with the vast amount of people simultaneously dining, staff were unable to keep up with replenishments and ushering to the extent that it felt like a fight for the few remaining pieces of ham or for the last few drops of juice.

Only 4 relatively small elevators are available to serve the guests reach their rooms spread over 21 floors. This in itself resulted in long waits for elevator space to reach our room. In the end we decided to use the hidden staff staircase to get to our room which was located on the 3rd floor.

A quick escape to the beach also resulted in a disappointing experience. Umbrellas were few with all deckchairs under the shade taken. The sun quickly became too hot as midday approached and any attempts to find deckchairs by the poolside shade were unsuccessful. None were available. Other families were also walking round and round trying in vain to secure an unused deckchair for themselves.

While the staff were friendly and did try to help, they either lacked the proper 5 star training or were new in their positions.

Overall our experience here was far less than the standard one would expect. Definitely not a 5 star experience. It's a pity as we paid quite a bit extra for that extra star rating. Honestly, we felt better during a previous stay in a 4 star hotel. We won't be coming here again and would not recommend this hotel to others.