Sara Inn Hostel

Sleep there with one eye open!

On the positive side:

* The management respond quickly and clearly to all emails.

*The rooms are a little worse for wear than the internet pictures suggest, but fine.

On the negative side:

*If you like to keep your money and your temper DO NOT use ANY of their services:

- Taxis
1. Our booked taxi failed to show up. We had a hell of a time waiting at the airport, making announcements over the PA system and finding a phone at the airport and calling the hotel (the pay phone was broken).
2. The price they quoted (60 LE) is the same as you can get off the rank, if not lower.
3. Our greatest concern, was that different staff members at the Hotel gave us very detailed but different accounts of why the taxi failed to show. Someone was lying to our faces.

-Tours
1. Their tours to the Pyramids and Museum are outrageously overpriced and completely unnecessary. We saved ourselves 1152% using the public bus system, which was perfectly fine and frequent.

-Train Booking
1. We were quoted a price for the train to Aswan (USD 60.50 each) and they told us that obtaining a ticket on the day would be "no problem" at all. However, when we made our booking the staff gritted their teeth and told us they would do everything they can to get a ticket "at such short notice". They returned with the tickets and a sweaty brow and told us "because the train was full, I had to pay an extra USD10 to the ticket manager in bribes to get the tickets..you are very lucky I know the ticket manager personally" etc, etc. I was angry with this news, but felt obliged to pay something towards their sweat and bribes, so I paid USD 5. Then when we got on the train, you can probably guess what we saw, rows of empty cabins!! We asked the train guard if the train would fill up later further down the line and he told us that there were many tickets left and that the hotel had cheated us.

In sum, the staff lie and smile to you at the same time. I contacted the management about our concerns and they said they were sorry, but did nothing to address the serious breach of trust issues. It seems that mgmt is quite happy for their staff to rip-off the hotel guests.

Unique Quality: Thieving staff.