Viliina Lilja
Google
We booked 3 excursions directly through Book Tour Egypt's office for our trip to Hurghada in December 2022: Private Day Tour : Cairo Flight and Trip from Hurghada, Utopia Island trip/Tour from Hurghada, boat Excursion and Luxor By Bus From Hurghada 1 Day Trip, Luxor Excursion & tours. We wwre a group of five with teo adults and three kids of 9, 11 and 13 years. I'll write about our experiences about Book Tour Egypt's office and transfers from and to our hotel here and write separately about each excursion.
I contacted the office directly and explained our wishes for the excursions and dates for them. The booking process went rather smoothly and near our trip to Egypt the office created a Whatsapp group for communication which was a good idea. At this point we also paid the deposit sum for the excursions and provided copies of our passports. We were to pay the remaining sum upon our arrival in Hurghada and I asked whether we could pay in euros which the office agreed to. I also asked the office to confirm the remaining amount but got no answer. When we arrived and met with the guide, he expected us to pay in GBP and it came up that the remaining sum was also incorrect. A series of very messy phone calls with the office followed: I was told different sums by different people in different currencies and had a gentleman from the office comment me things such as "this is not Chicago", "Tripadvisor takes a big commission" (we did not book via Tripadvisor) and "GBP and euro are not the same thing" (needless to say, I don't need anyone to explain me this). Finally the office agreed to make the calculation again, which they did, but the sum was calculated with some odd exchange rate because it didn't match the amount in GBP (accurate exchange rates are very easy to google). Finally we agreed about the sum and I paid it during our first excursion. One day before our Utopia Island excursion the office informed us that "Utopia Island is closed nowadays" and offered us another excursion. Also, the office told us that we should switch the dates between our shore and Luxor excursions. This was quite disappointing, since we wanted to have a
more relaxing excursion after Cairo and do some snorkling first before heading to Luxor. I don't know what was the core reason for this switch as Utopia Island excursions seemed to be available everywhere aa normal but I was too tired to start fighting with the office. So we accepted going to Luxor first (which meant that we needed to cut our New Year's Eve short since the pickup was very early) and ro switch our Utopia Island excursion to a Paradise Island excursion. All in all, there are several people in the office that don't seem to communicate very well with each other: apart from the confusing communication about the payment, we were asked same questions multiple times such as our room number and passport copies. On the other hand, we got all the relevant information such as pickup times via the Whatsapp group which was very handy. We made all payments in cash except the deposit which we did via PayPal. I recommend cash payments to others as well. The transfers from and to our hotel were very punctual and timely, sometimes even early. The drivers were also very professional and nice and navigated perfectly in the traffic.