room was clean and comfortable beautiful sand beach house reef for diving and snorkeling full of turtles diving center has professional services and a beginners services as well

Awesome diving sites and very nice people, at the diving center as well as in the hotel, restaurant and so on. Highly professional diving service, perfectly organized while keeping a smiling and positive mood that makes holidays even more brilliant!

We stayed for a week in march at this hotel with our two boys (2 & 4 y old).

We booked the hotel and the charter flight through a french TO specialized in diving trips. We already came here 8 years ago, so we knew what to expect : a quiet hotel, out in the desert with a child-friendly beach and an exceptional housereef.
Going to Egypt w/ children, we were really apprehensive about food, and Equinox proved to be a good choice, we all came back with better stomachs than before leaving...

The transfer from Marsa Alam airport was smooth, about 20 minutes. The check-in went well, althoug egyptian bureaucracy can be tiresome with all the forms to fill in.

We had a quadruple room which was very big (45m2) with 4 separate beds and a ensuite bathroom and a fridge. There was a tv, but no antenna so... Well, the beds were made everyday with the towels folded into different animals. The kids loved the surprise every afternoon!
There was a very nice swimmingpool area, but the water was too cold, so it was never used.
The buffet restaurant served food mostly geared towards divers (98% of guests were divers), so lots of pasta, rice and other carbs, with a choice of veggies, meat and fish. Some of the days, we had excellent egyptian desserts. Most important of all, the food was of good quality. This was not an all inclusive resort : bottled water was extra, as well as all other beverages, except during breakfast.
The beach is half a mile long and has umbrellas and windprotections. During our stay we had 3-4 quite windy days (end of winter), but the beach is protected in a bay and behind a reef so it is still not a problem for the kids to swim.
The snorkeling from the hotel is excellent, the best we've ever had. Supposedly, there's a dugong living nearby and we saw most of the other reef inhabitants : eagle rays, moray eel, reef shark, lionfish, scorpionfish...- the list is too long.
There's a diving center next to the hotel, with nice staff, but they are not very well organized and the equipment is not very recent.

All in all, we got what we came for and left very pleased. The "in the middle of the desert" feeling that we had 8 years ago was not the same, several other buildings are on their way up in the area, but the closest hotel is still 2km away.

We booked this on the basis of the one existing review but it was a great choice.!

Not many native English speakers (we were the only two for most of the time) but very helpful and friendly staff (most spoke good English).

Food was great too. Very good slightly oriental food - not poor attempts at western European food like some places.

The hotel has a diving centre, a wind surfing/kite surfing school (both seemed good) and kayaks for hire but the main event is the house reef. One of the best we have seen (comparable with some of the Maldive ones). Great coral and we always saw between 2 and 5 turtles (do collect any floating plastic you find while out snorkelling as it kills the turtles if they eat it - they think it is jelly fish).

Rooms fine. Nothing good or bad to report.