Discover Hurghada Area

Hurghada area beaches & reef

Here's the single most useful thing I can tell you about swimming on this coast: the beach and the reef are two separate questions, and the best resorts don't always answer both. Hurghada and the master-planned bays were largely built on sandy or dredged lagoon frontage, which is exactly why families love them — you get a proper sandy shore and a gentle, shallow entry that suits small children and nervous swimmers, the kind you simply don't find in much of Sinai. The trade-off is that a soft sandy lagoon often means the living coral has been cleared or lies further out, so the headline snorkelling here is frequently a short boat ride away, out to the Giftun island reefs, rather than straight off your own beach.

That said, plenty of resorts along this coast do have a genuine house reef, and they're the ones I steer keen snorkellers towards — typically the properties on Sahl Hasheesh's promenade, parts of Soma Bay and a handful of Hurghada's southern hotels, where a reef flat runs out from the beach to a drop-off busy with fish. On those, the drill is the same one I follow on every inspection: check whether there's a marked channel or a jetty out over the reef, whether the entry is sandy or sharp, and whether the tide leaves enough water over the coral to swim comfortably. Bring or buy reef shoes either way — the coral is protected, and a careless fin can undo decades of growth, so the good dive centres here are strict about it, and rightly so.

For the marquee snorkelling, though, the boat day is the thing. The Giftun islands, a half-hour or so out from Hurghada, are a marine-protected cluster of reefs and sandbanks where the water turns that improbable turquoise and the coral gardens are still in fine health — Orange Bay and Paradise Island are the famous stops. Most resorts run trips, but the operators vary a great deal in how many people they pack aboard and how carefully they treat the reef; ask us to point you to the ones I rate, because a good boat day here is one of the best in the Red Sea and a bad one is a floating car park.

Things to do around the Hurghada area

The water leads, but this coast fills a fortnight easily. Boat days are the staple — the Giftun island reefs, dolphin-watching trips out to the Dolphin House sandbank, and glass-bottom or semi-submarine cruises for anyone who'd rather stay dry. On land, the Eastern Desert is the great evening out: quad bikes and buggies over the dunes at sunset, a camel ride and a Bedouin dinner under a sky thick with stars, or a stargazing trip once the resort lights fall away. Hurghada town gives you the other side of Egypt — the Dahar souk for spices and cotton, the Marina boardwalk for dinner and a stroll, and the Grand Aquarium for a rainy-hour with children.

The area's trump card, though, is culture within reach. Luxor — Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, the temples of the pharaohs — is a long but very doable day trip from Hurghada by road, or a short hop by internal flight, and it's consistently the day guests talk about long after the tan has faded. Cairo and the Giza pyramids run as a full-day excursion by air. My advice is to book one big culture day through your hotel or with us, so you travel with a vetted guide and an air-conditioned coach rather than chancing a roadside operator. To plan the reef and resort side, our guides to Hurghada holidays and the best all-inclusive hotels in Hurghada are the natural next reads.

Choosing your bay: Hurghada town, Makadi Bay, El Gouna & Sahl Hasheesh

More than on any other Egyptian coast, where you stay within the Hurghada area decides the holiday you get, so it's worth matching the bay to your brief before you look at a single hotel. Choose Hurghada town if you want the most choice, the shortest transfer, the liveliest evenings and a real town to escape into — the all-rounder, and the safest first-Egypt bet. Choose Makadi Bay if the holiday is essentially a waterpark with a beach attached and you're happy to stay put in a self-contained resort forty minutes from town. Choose Sahl Hasheesh for a calmer, more polished, promenade-and-house-reef week that still has sand underfoot.

The two outliers reward a clearer idea of what you're after. El Gouna, north of Hurghada, is the one I send independent-minded couples and sporty types to — it's a walkable lagoon town of canals, marinas and genuinely good restaurants and bars, with world-class kitesurfing off its shallows, so you trade the sealed all-inclusive for somewhere you actually go out in the evening. It costs a little more and it isn't a classic sandy-beach resort, but nowhere else in Egypt feels like it. Soma Bay, well to the south, is the opposite kind of specialist: a quiet peninsula for golfers, spa-goers, kitesurfers and reef lovers who want space and one of the mainland's best house reefs, and who don't mind being an hour from the airport for it. My honest steer is simple — families and first-timers should start with Hurghada town or Sahl Hasheesh; waterpark fanatics head to Makadi; and anyone whose ideal evening involves a proper restaurant rather than a buffet should look hard at El Gouna. Tell me which of those sounds like your week and the shortlist writes itself.