Egypt: The Mechanics & Cost
Organising the Holiday
We bought the flight tickets at reduced fares at the Malaysia Airlines travel fair in February 2004. Hotel accommodation at the Cairo Marriott was booked through the Marriott’s website. Accommodation at the Nile Hilton in Cairo was booked through AsiaTravelMart, a Malaysia-based online travel portal. The other arrangements, i.e. the full day tour to the Pyramids, the cruise from Aswan to Luxor, the accommodation in at the Sheraton Luxor Resort, the internal flights (Cairo-Aswan and Luxor-Cairo) and the meet & greet throughout, were made through a travel agent in Cairo, Champion Tours.
Working with travel agents in Egypt was a nightmare in itself. I started off asking for general quotations, via email, from several travel agents before slowly whittling them down to one. The Tour Egypt website, purportedly run/sanctioned by the ministry in charge of tourism, has a wonderful form that will mass mail your requirements/queries to all the major travel agents registered with them. One click does it all!
However, the Egyptians, in general, are not easy to work with and this was eventually reflected in some of my experiences in the country. I wouldn’t recount my agonies, and relive them, but in general, my main grouses can be simplified in the following main points: (1) poor command of English which is contributive to… (2) not methodical nor sufficiently meticulous in answering questions; (3) lack of pro-activeness in making suggestions or giving advice; and (4) lack of transparency and structure in quoting prices. Furthermore, my supposedly “final” programme was eventually changed after I had arrived in Cairo without any prior consultation whatsoever. This, I eventually found out, had also happened to another couple booked with a different travel agent! They obviously don’t work to international standards, despite years of exposure to the international tourist trade. I can elaborate further if you are truly interested.
If I ever return to Egypt, I would try and avoid working with a travel agent for ground arrangements. If you’re planning on staying in international chain hotels, rooms can be booked through their respective sites and prices can be no more than what you’d end up paying through a travel agent, particularly if you book well in advance. You can also book through any of the many online hotel reservation portals. The Nile river cruises can be booked directly with the cruise operators - their contacts can be found by doing an internet search. Two of the more highly recommended cruises, the Movenpick’s Radamis and the Oberoi’s Philae, have online booking systems. Internal flights can be booked through Egypt Air’s offices throughout the world - their office in KL is located in KL Plaza. Finally, for tours and local transfers, a Lonely Planet guide will have all the practical advice and information you will need. It’s very easy to hire taxis for sightseeing trips (however long) and guidebooks will have background information on the sites, some of course being better than others. But if you did want to go on a guided tour, you can always book them locally.
The Cost
* The return ticket from KL to Cairo cost MYR1671 per person (after taxes).
* Accommodation at the Cairo Marriott cost EGP465 (MYR279) per night (this is before taxes). Our two-night stay came up to a total of EGP1255.75 (MYR754), but this includes one small meal.
* Accommodation at the Nile Hilton, Cairo cost USD91 (MYR346) per night. Our three-night stay cost USD273 (MYR1037).
* We paid Champion Tours the total sum of USD1804 (MYR6855) for ground arrangements, the Nile cruise, the accommodation in Luxor and the internal flights for two.
* We charged EGP728.90 (MYR437) to our credit cards for meals consumed at the hotels and the Fish Market restaurant.
* We changed exactly USD384 (MYR1460) for local expenditure. This covered various things such as meals, entrance fees, taxis, mineral water, loads of tips, all our shopping (!) and such things.
* We also took out travel insurance prior to leaving. This cost MYR87 per person.
So all in all, the total cost of the holiday came up to about MYR14,059 for two persons, or about MYR7,029.50 per person for a 12-day/11-night trip! Yes, it was a holiday of a lifetime…! *grin*
Some of you might have noticed that there have been quite a number of advertisements in the Malaysian press offering great travel deals to Egypt, some as low as MYR3000 per person for a 6-night trip including the cruise. The prices are really cheap. However, I would point out that these packages are for travel in the summer months, May-August - Egypt’s low travel period, for good reason. The heat! When I was in Luxor in mid-April, I could just about manage to walk around until about noon. After that, it became honestly quite unbearable and we had to seek refuge in our air-conditioned hotel room. I can’t imagine what the heat would be like in June/July. (see weather forecast here and here)
But that said, the prices being advertised now are indeed extremely low. However, you’d be advised to verify the quality of the hotels/cruises and whether you have to travel in a group or individually, the former being cheaper but also less flexible. Please also check whether you’d be travelling by plane or train from Cairo to Luxor/Aswan - it makes a whole lot of difference!
Posted on May 10th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: The Egypt Holiday
Jikon,
Thanks for the detailed breakdown of costs….great future travel planning template for me!
Nicholas
RM 7,000 per person is not bad actually… not bad at all..
OMG! You’re actually NOT reprimanding me for being trivial with money! It’s some people’s wages for a whole year!!
But you’re right, I did travel at the height of Egypt’s peak season (Easter week - tons of Europeans) when the weather was perfect - long but cool days.
Great Summary… thanks for sharing the experience…
November or December is actually a good time to travel to Egypt - nice and cool winter temperature.
Summer temperature can be in the 40s C !! Not too far off from the sauna in your health club.
hmm… i suspect costs would be about 10-20% cheaper in November/December as compared to April. However, I think the days are shorter then (shorter daylight hours).
Wow. I wanna go to Egypt (and other northern african states! morocco?).
Wow. Egypt seems quite exotic. Hihi.
Me and my friends went on a 11 day tour of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. Costs us about ?500-?600 per person. But it was mainly youth hostels and budget hotels. For some nights, we didn’t even book rooms in advance. Real gamble to actually go to a new place, not knowing where you’re gonna spend the night.
But it was really fun.
Egyppttt….
Jikon,
It was interesting reading your holiday summary. I have done the same as you, I mass-emailed tour companies via the Tour Egypt website. I spent last week collecting quotes and informatiion from the individual operators before I eventually chose OHOD TOURS. Eight of us have booked a private overland tour for 16days in July/August. Price per person was ?330 (approx MR 2,300) which I thought was good value. In Cairo we are staying in Le Meridien Pyramids, and in Sharm the Movenpick. I’m now slightly worried by the fact that they changed your tour when you arrived in Cairo without any prior warning. Were they major changes to your holiday or only minor?
Shailin
Shailin - it does sound like a good deal, but then I gather you don’t have any domestic/internal flights in your programme? That’s where the bulk of the cost would go…
Which brings me, the last minute changes were fairly major in my case. We wanted to fly from Cairo to Abu Simbel (via Aswan). We did not want to go overland because this would have meant a very long night train and then a 3-hour long journey in a van, and thus, major discomfort which we thought we could do without.
Before we left Malaysia, the travel agent sent us an email reconfirming all our arrangements, including the flights. Alas… that was not to be…
The day before we were supposed to fly to Abu Simbel (via Aswan) - which happened to be the day after we arrived in Cairo - the travel agent contacted us through the tour guide who was taking us around the pyramids. They informed us that the flight from Aswan to Abu Simbel was cancelled, but didn’t tell us why (was it the airline? was it the travel agent? was it the government? God only knows…). However, our flight from Cairo to Aswan was still confirmed and we still had to take it. The problem was this flight was booked to depart from Cairo at 0400H (or thereabouts) in the morning! The reason this flight was supposed to be so early was because we had to connect to an early flight to Abu Simbel in order to be able to view the Temple when the sun rises.
So anyway, we had to wake up at 0130H just to take this stupid flight to Aswan, now for no good reason. Arrived in Aswan very very early in the morning with nothing to do and then feeling very tired and zonked throughout the day.
But then what happened to the trip to Abu Simbel? Well… they booked us on an overland journey to the temple from Aswan - in a van. Precisely what we had wanted to avoid in the first place. And what time did the van leave Aswan? 0300H!!! What time did we have to wake up 0230H!!
So that makes two days in a row that we had to wake up in the dead of the night, not to mention the fact that we had only just arrived from Malaysia and were still suffering from jet-lag. It was not a good way to start a holiday…
On top of all that, because we went to Abu Simbel a day late in our programme, we had to forego a lovely sail-boat tour on the Nile which was part of the cruise package.
A South African couple we met later in our holiday also had last minute “changes” shoved onto them. They thought that they would have some time to recover after arriving in Egypt. Instead, the moment they landed, the travel agent took them on a full day’s tour of the pyramids, effectively giving them no time to rest. And then when they went to Luxor the following day to join the cruise, they were again shoved onto a tour (which was where we met) immediately after they landed!!
They’re not the best organisers on earth, these Egyptians…
Jikon,
I now understand what you mean by ‘changes’ made to the tour. Its sounds as if you received very little sympathy from the Egyptian tour operator for all the inconveniences you had to endure, especially considering you paid extra so that you could avoid these hassles and travel more comfortably.
You are right about our holiday, it does not include any internal flights such as Cairo-Aswan or Aswan-Abu Simbel. Instead we are taking the sleeper train to Aswan (start of cruise) and I am hoping to hire a mini-bus in Aswan the next day that can take us to Abu Simbel. The price of the flight is ?175 which is considerably more than our budget can afford.
I guess my friends and I are just going to have to sit back and let the Egyptians do what they have to do…..
Shailin
shailin - hmmm… I think the sleeper train is bearable. we decided against it because my partner has a bad back. but i’m not so sure that i’d do the overland journey to abu simbel, if I were you… I really did not enjoy the 3-4 hour trip from Aswan in the dead of the night in rather uncomfortable seats. and I definitely hated the return journey as the sun was rising and the heat became unbearable (the vehicle was not air-conditioned) and this was only April, not July! while the temple is in some ways impressive, unless you’re really into egyptology, it’s really far too much effort for so little, in my view. you’d see similar things throughout your holiday, if in smaller scale. while my partner liked it, I thought it was only so-so…