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Posts Tagged ‘luxury holidays’

There are many reasons to choose Egypt as a luxury holiday destination.  For some, Egypt’s year- round sunshine proves the major attraction with well-developed resorts, great beaches and excellent hotels.Ancient Egypt’s antiquities with the magnificent temples at Karnak, Luxor and Edfu and the Pyramids of course prove the greatest draw for many other visitors. For a growing number of tourists though, it’s the clear blue waters of the Red Sea that proves irresistible for snorkelling or scuba diving holidays.

If your idea of great luxury holidays involves snorkelling or Scuba diving, then Hurghada is probably the place for you!  Hurghada Hotels cater for the single traveller, couples and families and are perfect for a relaxed beach holiday if that’s all you want or can serve as the ideal base for diving holidays in Egypt.  Those with a taste for luxury holidays are well catered for in Sharm el Sheikh holidays with a choice of sumptuous five-star resorts complete with private beaches and fantastic international cuisine.Those on a tighter budget can base themselves in compact, family-friendly boutique-style Hurghada hotels that are intimate, welcoming and very human scale.

Hurghada’s warm waters are ideal for the fish and coral that make this place so popular with the diving community.Most of the popular dive sites are suitable for all levels of diving ability, from outright novice to seasoned expert.  Divers are rewarded with a rich and varied marine life that includes butterfly fish, moray eels, turtles, grouper fish and blacktip sharks. The Bottlenose dolphin is particularly populous in Hurghada’s waters, and the chances of meeting pods of wild dolphins on a dive are very good!  And even if you are a non-diver, you can still enjoy the sights of the underwater world of the Red Sea by booking a trip on a small submarine where you can dive to a maximum depth of 22m with around 50 minutes of bottom time.

luxury holidays to Hurghada can also take advantage of sports on, not just under, the water too! Hurghada is the top Red Sea destination for wind and kitesurfing and is rapidly gaining a great reputation as a wake-boarding destination too. Hurghada offers good, strong, winds throughout the year, sustained by the mountain ranges just behind the town and Giftun Island offshore. The coast is also fairly flat without fringing reefs, creating the perfect conditions for wind and kite surfing. Many Hurghada hotels also offer less extreme and more relaxed watersports from banana rides to snorkelling excursions to the awesome marine park of Giftun Island, pedal boats, canoeing, catamarans, glass-bottom boats and parasailing.

If diving doesn’t float your boat so to speak, perhaps a Nile Cruise past the ancient monuments and temples would be more suitable.

I had a need recently to give my daughter a little ‘telling off’. She had sent someone a note that contained a message that was not particularly pleasant. She of course said that it had been in retaliation for unpleasantness shown towards her. I assume that this a normal problem in schools, and with kids of her age. I had advised her to be more discreet with pieces of paper that may contain incriminating material. It reminded me of something that happened to me a few years ago, whilst flying to Egypt.

I was flying on the Excel Airways aircraft from Gatwick to Hurghada in Egypt. I had been saving for years for this holiday in Egypt, and had promised the family that it would happen one day. I had a good idea in my mind where I wanted to stay, but allowed my daughter to find details on Egypt holidays in the region of Hurghada.

We were relaxed and happy on board our flight, and looking forward to visiting Egypt. i had started chatting to a person who was sitting close to me on the flight. He had been a regular traveller to Egypt and had once been employed for a company operating Nile cruises when he was in his twenties. With him was a handy guide that list the local favourite spots to stay and visit. I noticed that our chosen hotel, the Iberotel Aquamarine, was among those featured in a section on luxury hotels. This gave me a feeling of satisfaction that we had chosen well, and were likely to have great time.

Forgive the digression from the main story. A note was found in one of the seat pockets that claimed a bomb was on board the aircraft. Our flight was diverted to an Italian airport, where we remained for three days in accommodation! Fortunately it turned out to be a hoax, but made me think of the conversation with my daughter.

The government are planning to increase the tax on air travel to over twice the current amount, in a bid to cut carbon emissions. The new ‘green tax’ will apply to long haul flights and will supposedly be spent on green issues and helping to reduce global warming. It sounds like a good plan, even if it does mean paying more to fly, after all aviation emissions are a huge contributor to climate change and one of the biggest areas for concern, right?

Well, no actually they’re not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that aircraft emissions are a myth or that they don’t contribute to climate change, because they’re not and they do. But if you look at the figures it becomes clear that air travel accounts for only two per cent of our total CO2 emissions. Yes, there is certainly room for improvement, and any way to reduce carbon emissions can only be a good thing, but is doubling the tax on air passengers who want to see the world or take tropical or Caribbean holidays really the way to go about it?

I suppose the theory is that luxury holidays are not a necessity in life and those who can afford them can afford to pay extra to help alleviate the environmental cost, but the bottom line is this scheme is not reducing global warming at all, it’s just charging people more for it. An alternative scheme, proposed by the travel industry, suggested that rather than taxing passengers the government could instead tax the airlines for any seats left empty. Considering that on average 1/3 of all seats remain empty after the plane is in the sky, this plan could have actually changed things by encouraging airlines to run less flights and ensure that planes were always as full as possible.

Unsurprisingly this proposal was rejected. Perhaps it was realised that although it could cause a serious reduction in carbon emissions, there was far less scope for making money out of it than taxing passengers more. As far as saving the planet goes, although airline pollution could and should be reduced, before this can be done people’s attitudes need to change. And in my experience there is no better way to change the way you feel about the planet than to see it – whether you go exploring in the rainforest, backpacking in Australia or just chilling out on a beach in Jamaica, holidays open people’s eyes to the world and let you see what’s out there worth saving.