"We stayed at the Tucana for seven nights at the end of March as a family of four, and while the hotel looks beautiful, unfortunately it doesn’t quite deliver where it matters.
The positives:
The décor throughout is genuinely stunning – very stylish, modern and luxurious. Housekeeping is great. The food is clearly made with good-quality ingredients and presented beautifully. Everything is table service across all restaurants, which initially feels like a premium touch.
The pool is lovely and warm, although to clarify, it’s essentially one pool on two levels rather than two separate pools.
The beach was a big highlight for us. There are more sunbeds available there than around the pool. You get the same drinks service at the beach as the pool, though it can be quite slow and frustrating. Even if you go to the bar yourself, you’re asked to sit down and wait for service, which can take 15–20 minutes. The beach itself is great – you can walk straight into the sea, which is unusual for Egypt, and there is a small but pleasant house reef.
The entertainment team were friendly and struck a good balance between being engaging and not intrusive, although the daytime programme could be more varied as it followed the same pattern each day.
Where it falls down:
Unfortunately, the service model is where this hotel really struggles. While table service sounds appealing, in reality it’s slow and restrictive.
The main restaurant was consistently the worst experience of the stay. Service was chaotic, slow and clearly understaffed. Orders were missed or incorrect, and you could wait 20 minutes just to be acknowledged. The atmosphere often felt stressed, which impacts the whole dining experience. This restaurant would be far better as a buffet – the current setup simply isn’t working.
Vegetarian options were also a real issue. Menus are poorly written and not clearly labelled, and the symbols are unreliable. Some vegetarian dishes weren’t marked at all, while descriptions lacked detail. On one occasion, the only vegetarian “main” was listed as a baked potato, which turned out to be slices of boiled potato in a minestrone-style soup. Without clear descriptions, it’s a gamble ordering anything, and I ended up just eating salad and bread that evening. While staff offered a workaround of pre-ordering meals 24 hours in advance, that’s not something I want to be doing on holiday.
Of the other restaurants, the beach restaurant (Yades) was by far the best – both in terms of setting and service, with attentive and genuinely friendly staff - Alaa was especially welcoming and friendly - the main restaurant staff could learn a lot from the Yades staff. The Italian was decent and had the best vegetarian choice. The main restaurant, needs serious improvement. Breakfast at the beach restaurant Yades was actually preferable despite less choice, purely because the service and atmosphere were far more relaxed.
Entertainment & evenings:
Evening entertainment is quite low-key. The main show times clash with the later dinner sitting (6:30 or 8:15), and as we always chose the later sitting, we missed the shows which run from 8:30–9pm. This appears to be because the performers then move to the sister hotel to repeat the show.
One evening we went over to the sister hotel next door to watch the entertainment. While it was easy enough to walk over, it’s not the kind of evening you expect when you’ve paid for a five-star experience. The difference in quality is very noticeable – the sister hotel feels much more basic and lacks the calm, stylish atmosphere that Tucana does so well. It felt like a step down rather than an extension of the experience. We preferred to stay at the Tucana where they have the low-key singers in the Tucana bar, which created a nice atmosphere until around 10pm.
The hotel also hosts themed Bedouin evenings twice a week, which are a nice idea in an outdoor sand setting, but when we attended it was very quiet and lacked atmosphere.
Beach, snorkelling & surroundings:
For snorkelling, Tucana’s own house reef is nice, but the real standout is actually at the neighbouring Fort Arabesque. The reef there is spectacular – genuinely some of the best shore snorkelling we’ve experienced. However, guests aren’t officially allowed to use it, and the lifeguards are very vigilant, so it becomes a bit of a stealth mission if you want to explore it. Worth knowing for keen snorkellers, but not ideal.
That said, during the day when walking along the beach past neighbouring hotels, many of which are more expansive, Tucana does feel like a welcome retreat to come back to – it’s definitely one of the more polished and aesthetically pleasing hotels in the area.
Other observations:
The hotel is quite compact, and the layout feels slightly off – particularly the main restaurant being so close to the pool. It can feel a bit awkward relaxing by the pool right next to people dining.
Management regularly walk around asking for feedback, which is well-intentioned, but not always at the right time – for example while you’re eating or sunbathing. I did raise the issue about vegetarian options and was told we could pre-order from any restaurant with 24 hours’ notice, but again this doesn’t feel like a practical solution while on holiday.
Reception staff were great – we had an issue one evening which they handled professionally and helpfully.
Sustainability concerns:
On a more serious note, we were really disappointed by the hotel’s use of single-use plastics. The constant use of plastic straws and the daily distribution of fruit in thick plastic trays – which are simply thrown away after one use – was quite shocking. These trays are easily reusable, yet there seems to be no attempt to reduce waste. I even tried to return one to be reused, but it was dismissed. If you’re visiting the Red Sea for its incredible marine life, it’s quite distressing to see this level of unnecessary plastic waste. The hotel really needs to address this and adopt more environmentally responsible practices.
Overall:
This hotel has clearly been designed to look luxurious, and in many ways it does. But the service, particularly in the main restaurant, the lack of flexibility, and some operational shortcomings really let it down.
We wouldn’t return. Having stayed at a higher-end all-inclusive previously (Rixos Seagate), the difference in service and food offering was very noticeable, and this hotel didn’t meet those expectations."
