Amazing 2 nights Sailing Nile cruise from Aswan to Luxor

We booked this cruise more than four weeks in advance and scheduled our trip to Egypt around this Nile cruise (Alexandria, Cairo and Aswan before, and Luxor and Hurghada after the cruise). Five days before the scheduled departure, when we were just about to leave Cairo for Aswan, I was contacted by someone from SpecialTrips via WhatsApp that the cruise would not run on the dates we booked, even though the trip was confirmed upon booking (we had already paid for it and received tickets). Without offering an apology, the guy from SpecialTrips asked us to either move the cruise to one day before or the day after the original departure. Looking through other reviews on Tripadvisor, we noticed that this seems to have happened to other customers before, in some cases even closer to the scheduled departure. This is completely unacceptable. We understand that the current situation with Covid might lead to certain cruises not reaching full capacity, but this has to be communicated in advance. You simply cannot make customers believe that they are booking for a certain date and even confirm the trip only to communicate at short notice that the trip won’t take place after all. How can you expect customers to be this flexible when you know exactly that your target customers do in all likelyhood not live in Egypt but come from abroad and have very likely booked other hotels and activities before and after the Nile cruise. Since we were able to change the hotel reservations for Aswan and Luxor at short notice and since we had planned for enough time in Aswan to justify leaving earlier, we decided to do the cruise one day before the one we originally booked. The cruise itself was very nice, the food was pretty decent and our guide Ahmad did an outstanding job at explaining to us the significance of the Kom Ombu-, Edfu-, Karnak- and Luxor-Temples and was very helpful in coordinating with us the purchase of the Luxor Passes at Karnak (for which you need USD instead of Egyptian Pounds and all kinds of other ridiculous things such as passport photos) as well as with everything else. For this we would rate the trip 4/5. Even though the cruise ended up being a good experience, the highly unprofessional way in which SpecialTrips treats its customers and outright lies to them would easily warrant a 1/5 rating.

Me and my wife had amazing time on this tour. Our guide, Mohamed Albasha, was helpful & informative. Definitely recommended tour.

Room and facilities more than matched the pictures, the food was good and the staff super helpful. Good value for money too.

Five stars for service: specially our guide Mohamed was enthusiastic amidst of being in 106 degree without water or food (fasting). Mike was super helpful, went beyond the call of duty with air ticket changes and COVID test. Food was also great quality and varied. The cruise is very simple, pretty bared, far from 5 stars. But the staff was very friendly and kind. Mohammed the bartender/DJ was very nice, but they need more servers. When booked the cruise the title said 3 days/ 2 nights cruise with hot air ballon but when we got there, the hot air ballon wasn’t included. Big disappointment. Overall for the price it was worth it and the time frame perfect. People who did more days just went back to the same stops and monuments.