Sonesta St George Hotel

There are 322 rooms and suites at the Sonesta St George Hotel Luxor, styled in a classical European manner with marble bathrooms, satellite television, minibars, safes, tea and coffee making facilities and individually controlled air conditioning. Beds come as kings or twins across most categories, bathrooms are properly finished in marble, and housekeeping standards are kept high. What separates one category from the next is mostly the view, and in this hotel the view is everything: the ladder climbs from the city side, through side Nile outlooks, to full front Nile panoramas across to the west bank.

Our advice is simple: if the budget allows one upgrade anywhere in your Egypt holiday, spend it on a Front Nile View room here. Guests who take our advice tell us the sunset from the room alone justified it, and Royal Club is worth the further step for the lounge and butler on stays of three nights or more.

Bed and breakfast or half board: how it works

We sell the Sonesta St George Luxor on a bed and breakfast or half board basis, and in a sightseeing city like Luxor that is exactly right. Breakfast is a generous buffet in Serapis, the main restaurant, with river and pool outlooks to start the day. Half board adds your evening meal there too, built around international buffets and theme nights that take in Continental, Egyptian and Japanese cooking.

Drinks are paid as you go, and the hotel is fully licensed, with cocktails and wine served in its bars and restaurants. If you are on half board but fancy a night in the Italian or Japanese restaurant instead of the buffet, ask us and we will confirm the exact arrangements with your quote. Many of our guests choose bed and breakfast and mix hotel dinners with Luxor’s restaurant scene, which works beautifully: the town has some genuinely good Egyptian kitchens within a short taxi ride, and your best room view in Egypt deserves at least one in room breakfast too.

The restaurants at Sonesta St George Luxor

Bars and cafés

• Nobles Lounge, an English style lounge bar with Nile views, cocktails, wines and a nightly DJ
• Lotus Café, open 24 hours in the lobby for coffee, fresh pastries and late night drinks
• Jeb’s Pool & Swim-up Bar, for salads, wraps, smoothies and cocktails without leaving the water
• Nile Pontoon, an oriental café right over the river, serving shisha and Egyptian teas and coffees at sunset

The pools at Sonesta St George Luxor

There are two outdoor pools, and between them they cover every season. The main pool sits directly beside the Nile, ringed by a sun terrace with loungers at the water’s edge, so you swim with cruise boats and feluccas sliding past a few metres away. Jeb’s swim-up bar keeps the terrace supplied with fresh juices, cocktails and light lunches, and the sunset from here, straight over the Theban hills, is one of the best free shows in Luxor. Loungers are plentiful and the terrace rarely feels pressed for space, because most guests are out sightseeing for at least part of the day.

The second pool sits in the hotel’s gardens and is heated, which matters more than you might think: Luxor is a classic winter destination, and while January days are warm and sunny, unheated water can be bracing. Here you swim comfortably all year round.

Health and fitness centre

The hotel’s health and fitness centre is a proper facility rather than an afterthought, and it is the right way to unbend after a morning climbing in and out of tombs.

• Gym with free weights and strength training machines
• Massage menu with a range of treatments
• Sauna and steam room
• Jacuzzi
• Aerobics and fitness classes
• 24 hour room service back upstairs

East bank: temples on your doorstep

Few hotels anywhere sit this close to sights of this calibre. Luxor Temple is around 2 km along the Corniche, a flat 25 minute riverside stroll or five minutes by taxi, and it is magical after dark when the columns are floodlit. Karnak, the greatest temple complex ever built, is about 15 minutes by road; give it a full morning for the Great Hypostyle Hall alone, a forest of 134 vast columns that no photograph prepares you for. The Luxor Museum, one of the finest small museums in Egypt with beautifully lit pieces from the tombs, and the souk, all spice sacks and cheerful haggling, both sit within a short hop. Sonesta St George Luxor is, quite simply, positioned in the middle of it all.

West bank: the Valley of the Kings

Across the river lie the headline acts: the Valley of the Kings with the tomb of Tutankhamun, the great terraced temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahari, the Colossi of Memnon and the artisans’ village at Deir el Medina. Allow around 40 minutes by road via the bridge, and go early, both for the soft light and to stay ahead of the heat and the crowds. It is a half day that stays with people for life.

On and above the Nile

Book a felucca for the hour before sunset and sail under canvas past Banana Island, with nothing but the creak of rigging and the call to prayer drifting over the water, or take a dawn hot air balloon flight over the west bank, floating above Hatshepsut’s temple as the sun clears the east bank hills. Gentler still, the hotel’s own Nile Pontoon puts you on the river with a mint tea in hand and no effort at all.

All of it is easier with the right guide. We arrange guided excursions with qualified Egyptologist guides and drivers, timed around you rather than a coach party, and priced clearly before you travel. Tell us what you want to see and we will build your days around it.

The hotel stands on Corniche el Nile, the grand riverside boulevard of Luxor’s east bank, in the stretch where the city’s five star addresses gather. Out of the front door you have the promenade, horse drawn calèches, moored cruise boats and river life; the bustle of the town centre, the souk and Luxor Temple lie a little to the north. It is an unmistakably Egyptian setting, lively by day and atmospheric at night, with the hotel gardens and river terrace as your calm retreat from it.

We arrange transfers for every booking, so you are met at Luxor airport and driven straight to the hotel with no queuing for taxis; the run into town is an easy 15 to 20 minutes. Taxis and calèches wait outside the hotel for short hops, and agreeing the fare before you set off is the local custom.

On foot, the Corniche promenade is the obvious evening ritual: turn right out of the hotel and simply follow the river towards the floodlit temple, with the west bank glowing pink across the water. Cafés and small shops line the route, and the whole stretch is flat, well lit and easy walking.

The questions our Egypt specialists are asked most often about the Sonesta St George Hotel Luxor, answered honestly. If yours is not here, call us, we know this hotel well.