Tulum Beach Resort Dakhla

The whole team made sure we were comfortable throughout our pleasant stay at Hotel Tulum in Dakhla. From reception and management to the restaurant staff, everyone was friendly, attentive and available. Their professionalism and genuine care made a real difference. I’d gladly come back and highly recommend the hotel.

I couldn’t wait to leave. Some parts of the hotel were still being built, which we hadn’t been told about, and there was dust everywhere outside our room. It felt like half a construction site. The sheets in the “prestige suits” and other rooms were old, cheap and scratchy, like they’d been washed too many times. Even after we asked a cleaner to change them, the replacement was exactly the same. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in a hotel, including in cheaper two- and three-star places. At breakfast, cleaning staff, waiters and gardeners were all eating and serving themselves from the buffet alongside guests. Some of the displayed food was covered in flies, which put me off eating. The buffet had an unpleasant atmosphere. There was no privacy between staff and customers, and the experience felt really invasive. There wasn’t a proper concierge either, just people standing at the front desk. The hotel is not five stars, despite its advertising. The staff were untrained and the atmosphere inappropriate. I suspect there was significant investment in fake reviews.

The private beach is in a fantastic location, though it still needed to be cleared of debris and waste. Breakfast was great, with live cooking stations and a wide selection of local and international food. I also attended a banquet, where the local dishes were great. The staff made our stay special, and the resort was a wonderful place to stay. Our rooms and suites were spacious and well furnished, though quite a few amenities and basic functions inside the rooms still weren’t finished.

The staff were genuinely nice and friendly, but the rest of this holiday was horrible. Our family of four paid more than 4000€ and changed suites three times because of cockroaches. We were eventually sent to another hotel. In the last suite there were more than five cockroaches, and at 5 am I woke to find one running over my baby’s face in bed. Three days after we arrived, I got food poisoning. We depended entirely on the hotel’s food, and I was afraid my children would get sick too. We tried to leave early but couldn’t find a flight home, so we were stuck there for the week. Sadly, my one-year-old got food poisoning as well. On our last night she had a very high fever, and we had to fly home with her feverish and suffering from diarrhea. I was terrified for her. She needed two antibiotics for 10 days. When we asked for a refund, they refused. We expected high-quality service, or at least a clean one. I had a mental breakdown over this experience, and I won’t take my children to this region again. When I told other guests what had happened, I learned we weren’t the only ones, others had food poisoning and cockroaches in their rooms too. Never again. Please don’t go there, your holiday could turn into a nightmare.