Tarakhan Hotel in Dahab

We arrived at this hotel at 2.00 am. We booked two rooms for two nights for a group of 4 people. It was awful! Dirty tiny rooms, tiny bathroom, hair on sheets, fridge in rooms were grubby with shelves not cleaned, rubbish under bed, filthy floors, bedroom door that did not close - had to lock the other person into the room when going in and out of the room, A/C did not work, filthy swimming pool water. We decided to leave after staying 1 night instead of 2. Things got worse at this point. The hotel owner/manager (Emad) would not let us leave without paying for the 2 rooms for 2 nights. I explained I had already paid through a well known worldwide online booking website. He insisted he had not withdrawn his payment from the online booking website & I must pay him directly. This confused me. I showed him my confirmation which said payment would be in advance on my credit card. He would not let us leave the hotel until we paid. I felt bullied and intimidated by this man. Would he have behaved this way if my husband was with me, and he had to deal with a man? After a long time arguing with him. I paid for the two nights. He claimed he was doing me a favour charging me what was the amount I had contracted to pay the online website. He claimed he was not charging me taxes, when in fact all taxes were included in my booking rate on the website. I paid him the full amount due as per the online website. He said his system is to get payment directly from customers & not collect from the online agent. This is a scam. Not once when he was bullying me for payment did he ask why I was leaving after only 7 hours in the place. He just wanted his money. We moved to a lovely hotel around the corner and spent a blissful week. Emad subsequently sent me a text asking me why I left. We had a very polite exchange of texts. I explained things were dirty, and we were very disappointed. He acknowledged that some things could have been better, but in essence it was a cheap hotel for people “with incomes below average”, which I do understand explains why a room can be very basic, but not why it needs to be filthy, with unwashed floors, rubbish under beds, hair on sheets, no fresh top sheet, just a plain used blanket to sleep under. His explanation for the dirty and murky swimming pool water is that it was “natural water from wells and we don’t use a lot of chemicals in it“. I have never seen natural well water look so bad. No way would we consider getting into that swimming pool. The overall filth of the place, the hassle and unpleasant treatment when we tried to leave is why I am leaving this review, not because it is a completely basic hotel, and not worth any amount of money. Avoid this place!

At first it seemed okay Yassar was nice but later he suggested we go diving at a certain place (which we knew was good) they took us to a completely different place and we didn't want to go there so he lowered the price, we got back to him at the end of the dive of course he doesn't give us the money and then he decided to return it he gave some money after it was in our hand he took it from our hands!!!! and decided "that we don't deserve this", then he started yelling at us. This is Yassar's real face!! You decide if you want to go there...