I stayed in this hotel for 4 nights with 3 friends during a long weekend. I booked it though an independent website. We booked 2 rooms, including buffet breakfast.

We arrived in the hotel quite late (just after midnight) only to be told that we will have to wait, as our rooms were not ready. We were offered a complimentary drink from the bar. Waiters were very quick to point out that we could not order alcoholic drinks. Staff were unable to take our orders, even though we read them out from the menu and even pointed them on the menu card. When our order arrived , we were presented with something completely different.

After 50 minutes, after two visits from the reception desk, we were given our room keys (at 1 am). Even though our voucher clearly stated that we required two twin rooms, the hotel was unable to accommodate us on the same floor. One of the rooms that we were given had a strong smell of mildew and stale cigarettes.

When we checked our rooms, we noticed that there were inconsitencies in how rooms were prepared, such as one bathrobe and one pair of slippers in one room and one bathrobe in another room and no slippers. Also only one set of toiletries, despite the fact that there were two people staying in their room.

We complained abour our unsatisfactory check-in process the following day and the hotel manager moved us to adjoining rooms on the same floor and offered a fruit basket for each room.

The hotel looks stylish and has magnificent rooms of the Nile from higher floors, especially at night.

There is a Buddha Bar in the hotel. Drinks are quite pricey and service is poor. We stood next to the cash register for approx 10 minutes asking to settle our bill on a busy Friday night and eventually left the place without paying and came back 10-15 later to pay the bill again.

There is a nice spa in the hotel, however in order to use the indoor pool you need to book treatments, such as massage, facials etc. This is not mentioned on the hotel's website.

We stayed at the Sofitel twice, at the beginning and end of a tour. For the second stay, for some reason we were upgraded to the club level with full amenities including complimentary happy hour and appetizers as well as free Internet and snacks all day. The rooms were clean and large, the bed was very comfortable, and the airconditioning was excellent, but the accommodations are not as luxurious as one would expect from a 5* hotel. That Internet at the non-club level was $6 for 15 minutes was silly, considering a cab will take several people to most places in Cairo for $2 and we paid 90 cents for 30 minutes at an Internet cafe in Luxor.

The view from your balcony and the hotel's public areas are lovely. The breakfast buffet [included] was very good and it is especially pleasant to eat breakfast outdoors on the terrace overlooking the Nile. The in-house restaurants were very expensive, but we enjoyed the Kebabgy [?sp] restaurant which is part of the hotel but next door - make reservations at the hotel. It was very reasonably priced [dinner for 2 without alcohol less than $40], the food was tasty and plentiful, there was entertainment, and again we sat on the terrace overlooking the Nile.

I did not experience the noise problem others have reported and the elevators were generally sufficient to meet the needs of guests. Would the hotel be worth $350/night, the price if it had not been part of our tour? I don't think so, but we were pleasantly surprised that our tour provided such a nice hotel for us.

The hotel is a big tower in the south part of the gezira island in the middle of Nile. In the hotel are approximatley 25 floors, 3 restaurants, bank, buddha bar, casino, spa and sauna.
The staff is helpful and kind, but sometimes is not really efficient (we had some problem with air conditioned, it was solved after 2 days).

We were extremely dissapointed by the service at the hotel. When we arrived they initally had no record of our booking, after two hours we were allowed to book in. One of the personnel told us that we have booked "a sepcial offer" and that all our meals were included - he actually encouraged us not to dine outside the hotel. We went back 3 times to confirm this. When we checked out, we were informed that we have a bill of almost $1500 for food. The way that the management handled our complaint was dissapointing. The whole experience at the hotel spoiled our holdiday. Communication ia bad and they are not organized.