Benben by Dhara Hotels - Adults Only

Our stay at Benben was a bit of a mixed one. If you are someone who has a lot of time on your hands and you want to take photos for instagram and do not care about water supply/shower issue, this may be the right place for you. On the other hand, if you have travel schedule planned and not too flexible with time (e.g., Abu Simbel day trip) and care about sleep quality, this is not the place for you. We stayed here for 2 nights, on our first day, we arrived around 3pm with sweats and heat exhaustion from our Philae temple visit. After being sent to our room, we realised the water wasn’t working. Hotel told us to wait as they had some water supply issue, after waiting for 5 hours, we called again and were told they are still fixing it and could not tell us an ETA on the fix. With frustration and massive migraine from heat exhaustion and no clear ETA, I figured I had to sleep with sweats and anger. The 2nd issue we encountered was the ferry to the dock. The hotel is on and island which means every time we want to go in and out, we would need to contact the hotel to arrange for the boat for transfer). On the day we need to leave, we were waiting on the boat with a Danish couple but we could not depart after waiting for 20 mins (post the initial agreed departure time). Even though the other couple made a complaint to the hotel staff, they did not care or give a clear answer on when we can leave. Another 20 mins later, we we realised we were waiting for another couple to come onboard (and confirmed with them that they were 20 mins late to their original appointment). At this point, we were already very late to meet our own driver and start our 8 hours trip to Luxor. Most hotel staff could not speak English, the only ones we can communicate to was Nirvana (from front counter) and the restaurant manager. The rest of the staff were not well trained to do basic communication. So… If you have time, ok to deal with the above potential issues (oh…and lots of stairs!), go ahead and you will enjoy the amazing views from the hotel.

Benben is a beautiful place and the service is top notch. Why the 3 stars? Our room jacuzzi was way too hot to enter. On the first day they send someone over who added cold water so we could enjoy it. Then on the second day as we are coming back from our day trip and want to relax, we find out our jacuzzi is again way too hot. It’s not fun to wait for them to fix this issue when we want to go in right now and not in an hour or so. Also as a 5 stars hotel, the hot water kept running out in our shower after 15 minutes which is quite crazy. It shouldn’t be like this. Or else we loved everything. The food is really good, and as I said the staff/service is amazing.

Location and view the best in Aswan. Breakfast was also excellent. Unfortunately, dinner experience was quite bad as it took them 40 mins to serve our food.

probably the best hotel you can find in the area. location, service, cleanliness everything was very good.