Renaissance Sharm El Sheikh Golden View Beach Resort

Nice hotel but overall not a great experience. 3.5/5 for me.

What I liked:
- Location: Good reef just off their jetty (I saw a hammerhead there!). Right next to El Fanar, one of the best locations for snorkelling and diving in Sharm
- Facilities: Nice, newly refurbished rooms. Decent gym (for a hotel in Egypt). Nice beach (although it was hard to find space later in the day). Very clean.
- Staff: Quite polite and nice. Aldo from the dive center was super nice.

We quite disliked the food:
- Breakfast was fine, but lacked any healthier, premium products (nuts, berries, mango, salmon, avocado). I understand it’s a cheaper hotel, but at least they could have enough brocolli… (there was a steamed veggie bowl, and the brocolli was always quickly taken by guests, and only carrots and courgette remained. I don’t know, I feel that if the hotel sees there’s higher demand for something, they should refill more of it (or stop offering it in the first place)). Hummus was available only on the first day, then they “ran out” (even though it was available in the a la carte restaurant)
- Lack of good, fresh seafood and fish. This was very very disappointing, and the reason we ate most of our meals besides breakfast outside of the hotel - the Calamari a la carte restaurant didn’t have fresh seawater fish (they only had the Nile-tasting tilapia) and the seafood tasted strange. The seabass from the in-room menu tasted mushy and old. A seaside holiday without good fish is very disappointing.
- Pasta is a bit overboiled and pizza tasted strange
- No premium beers (like corona or desperados; only Egyptian ones and Heineken)

Generally service wasn’t the best. Yes, I’ve got the room upgrade because of my status with the Marriott chain. But the service and experience took away from my experience.

Here are a few small examples:
- Didn’t always get what I ordered in-room dining (cheese was missing on pasta, despite request)
- Didn’t get the pick-up from the room on the last day as requested (so had to walk uphil for 10 minutes with lugagge at night)
- Didn’t get the breakfast package at reception as requested on time and so had to wait before leaving
- Couldn’t pay mix of cash and card for in-room dining, even though the telephone operator specifically confirmed
- Hotel taxi (charging 2-3x of what it would cost normally) dropped us off at the wrong terminal, so we had to walk with all our luggage to a different one
- Wasn’t allowed through the side entrance one evening (even though the previous evening it was been fine!) - ideally they would have told me in advance and spare me walking 10 minutes to the reception and then 10 minutes back to my room (or they could have checked with the reception and made an exception for that one time).