Denis TheMenace

Review of Al Hamra Residence and Village

First to the initial situation. After a week in Ab...

First to the initial situation. After a week in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, we decided to extend the holiday for a week and chose the hotel al hamra residence and village.
Basically we can say that the hotel met all of our requirements. The rooms are big enough, have a balcony (on the first floor) and are clean. The space in the closet is a little small. There is working air conditioning and the beds are comfortable. There is a pool on the premises as well as a gym. Most of the employees speak good to very good English and are generally very friendly, the selection at the buffet is more than sufficient (we had half board) and delicious. However, the space available at tables was sometimes a bit too small at peak times, which is why you sometimes had to wait to enter the restaurant.
If you have booked half board you have to expect relatively high prices for drinks. 1.5 liters of water 22 dirham = (just under four euros) and soft drinks 24 dirham (= 4 euros). In Germany the normal restaurant prices would be.
A small disadvantage is that when we were here (23.4.-30.4) there were a lot of children between the ages of 2-8 years. This of course leads to a very high level of noise, especially at breakfast and dinner and at the pools. But you can't blame that on the hotel and if you don't like children on vacation, you can also book a hotel for adults.
Now for the other disadvantage, which is much larger. Unfortunately the number of Russian guests is far too high. The Russians we saw or met are for the most part arrogant, arrogant and unfriendly. They do not speak English and can therefore only communicate very poorly. The whole thing is rewarded by the fact that there is a children's animation program and a children's club, but ONLY in Russian.
The arrogance becomes particularly evident when one leads the daily struggle for lying by the pool or on the beach. There are actually extensive rules regarding behavior when bathing at the pool and beach, among other things it is clearly regulated that you are not allowed to reserve chairs. These rules can be found in English and Arabic - but not in Russian. As already mentioned at the beginning, the Russian guests mostly can neither speak nor read English, which means that the couches are reserved early in the morning (7.30 am). And not just with towels, but sometimes exclusively with shopping bags with sunscreen. That is a huge cheek. When the (unfortunately mostly Russian) owners finally show up after a while and you confront them - which is unfortunately only possible if you speak Russian due to the lack of knowledge of English - you only get ignorance and incomprehension, even if you do takes the time to explain the pool and beach rules. Something like that can really spoil your mood and we have heard from other guests that this is not an isolated case, but daily bread.
Normally the hotel would have deserved 4 stars on a scale of 1-5. Because of these last two negative points, unfortunately a maximum of 2 stars.