Oriental Rivoli Hotel & SPA in Sharm el Sheikh

I am writing this review with genuine disappointment. My stay at the Oriental Rivoli Spa was a tale of two extremes, and unfortunately, the negative ending completely overshadowed the positive beginning.

I had fully intended to leave a glowing 5-star review. The evening reception staff were exceptional—polite, efficient, and even arranged for a delicious dinner to be brought to my room when I was too late to go to the restaurant due to my flight landing late. They were a credit to this hotel.

However, the following morning during check-out was an absolute disaster, and it was all due to one individual at the morning reception.

The problems started when I went to check out. I was waiting in the reception area for over 15 minutes while the staff member was struggling to communicate with some Italian clients. It was clearly a situation he was not equipped to handle.

While I was waiting, my guide arrived and politely mentioned that we needed to hurry for our tour. It was at this point that the receptionist began speaking about me in Arabic to my guide. He assumed I wouldn't understand, but I did. He was making derogatory comments and blaming me for the delay, saying I was late, when the holdup was entirely his own fault as he fumbled with the other guests.

To add insult to injury, after finally dealing with the other guests, he then insisted on holding me for an additional 15 minutes to "search my room" before I could leave. I have never, ever been treated with such suspicion and disrespect at a hotel check-out. It was humiliating and made me feel like a criminal or a thief. And now seeing other reviews and noticing a pattern of sporadically searching rooms and being rude to customers, I don't find it as shocking.. They also force you to fill out a satisfactory form before they initiate the room search, to get as many good reviews as possible before tarnishing the whole experience.

This staff member's unprofessionalism, his willingness to lie about a guest in another language, and his blatantly discriminatory treatment ruined my entire impression of the hotel. What should have been a smooth departure turned into a stressful and insulting ordeal.

A hotel is more than its rooms; it's about the respect it shows its guests. I will never return to the Oriental Rivoli Spa and cannot recommend it based on this experience.

Very Disappointing Stay – Never Again

We had a very unpleasant experience at this hotel. The rooms were dirty, and whenever the kids ran around, dust would rise everywhere. There was no hand sanitizer or proper facilities for washing hands. When I asked an attendant about it, I was told, “You can use the one in the bathtub.”

Although the hotel is advertised as all-inclusive, no water was provided in the rooms. The food was prepared almost entirely for Italians, with special dishes made just for them. As a result, we ended up eating outside most of the time.

On top of that, when I went to get pizza, the attendant told me I couldn’t be served because I had taken a large plate instead of a small one. I left the plate and walked away in frustration.

Overall, this was a terrible experience, and I would never consider coming back.