Jaz Makadi Star & Spa

Accommodation is spread through two and three storey garden wings rather than stacked into a tower, and with 167 rooms in total the resort stays personal. Every category comes with individually controlled air conditioning, a satellite LCD TV, tea and coffee making facilities, free Wi-Fi, an in room safe, a hairdryer and a bottle of water per person replenished daily. Balconies or terraces look over the pool or the gardens, and the minibar can be stocked at a charge.

Jaz Makadi Star & Spa rooms at a glance

What all inclusive includes at Jaz Makadi Star

All inclusive here is refreshingly straightforward. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are buffets at Al Warda, the main restaurant beside the pool, with live show cooking stations at every service and a late risers breakfast if the holiday clock has taken over. Through the day the bars keep you topped up with snacks, ice cream, tea and coffee.

• Buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner at Al Warda
• Late risers breakfast
• Snacks and light bites at the pool and beach bars
• Local drinks from 10am to midnight
• Local beer, Egyptian wine, spirits and cocktails
• Bottled water in your room, replenished daily
• One Dine Around dinner per stay included
• Afternoon tea and coffee

The drinks package runs from 10am until midnight and covers mineral water, soft drinks, local beer, Egyptian wine and local spirits and cocktails served by the glass. Imported brands are available at a charge. After midnight the 24 hour lobby bar keeps serving on a paid basis.

Dine Around Makadi Bay: seven restaurants beyond your hotel

The Star runs one main restaurant itself, then borrows the entire village for variety. All inclusive guests enjoy one complimentary dinner per stay at any of the seven Dine Around a la carte restaurants across Madinat Makadi. Pre booking is required at least 48 hours ahead through guest relations, and further visits can be arranged at a charge, so pick your favourite early in the week.

Bars at the Star

• Fayrouz pool bar, cocktails and light bites at the water’s edge
• Al Khayam lobby bar, open 24 hours with cocktails, wine, tea and coffee
• Negma beach bar, drinks and snacks on the sand at lunch and tea time

Evenings at Jaz Makadi Star

After dinner the pace stays deliberately unhurried: expect live music and low key shows rather than a stage full of microphones, with the 24 hour lobby bar as the natural last stop. When you fancy more of a buzz, the bars and cafes of Souk Makadi are less than ten minutes away on foot, so you can choose your volume night by night and still be back in the quiet within minutes.

The centrepiece pool is a big, lazy curve of blue threading between the palm studded terraces, with pergola shaded double sunbeds at its edge and the Fayrouz bar close enough that nobody has to draw straws for the drinks run. Because the resort is adults only, the soundtrack is conversation and page turning rather than cannonballs.

Heated swimming through the winter at Jaz Makadi Star

There is more than one pool to choose from, and one is heated from the start of November until the end of April, which makes this a genuinely swimmable winter sun hotel rather than one where the water is for looking at. Our customers tell us the heated pool is the smaller, cosier of the two, and all the more sociable for it. Pool and beach towels are provided without charge, and loungers around the pools are plentiful for the number of guests, another benefit of keeping the resort to 167 rooms.

If you prefer your swimming with a horizon, the sea is a five minute stroll away, and the sheltered bay stays calm enough for a proper swim on most days of the year.

The private beach sits about 400 metres from the resort, an easy, flat, five minute stroll through the gardens of Madinat Makadi, with a shuttle around the village if you would rather ride. Once you are there, the routine writes itself: loungers and parasols on soft sand, the Negma beach bar handling drinks and light bites through lunch and tea time, and one of the Red Sea’s most sheltered bays in front of you.

Swimming and snorkelling in Makadi Bay

Makadi Bay is a broad, protected sweep of sand with a gentle, gradual entry into the water, so getting in is a wade rather than a scramble. Swim out and the bay comes alive: our customers regularly tell us the snorkelling here is far better than they expected from a sandy beach, with shoals of fish and patches of coral within reach of a confident swimmer. Bring or borrow a mask, you will use it daily.

Diving and water sports

The Madinat Makadi diving and water sports centre is on hand for anything more ambitious, at a charge: try dives and full certification courses, boat trips to the outer reefs of the Hurghada coast, windsurfing and sailing. Hurghada’s dive sites are among the finest in the world, and day boats collect from the bay itself, so there is no early coach transfer eating into your morning.

Mividaspa, the reason the hotel carries Spa in its name

Mividaspa is the Jaz group’s signature spa brand, and its Madinat Makadi health club and beauty salon is the wellness heart of the whole village. Expect Egyptian and Turkish hammam rituals, a sauna, steam room and jacuzzi, and a long treatment menu that runs from sea salt body scrubs to bamboo massages and multi day relaxation programmes. Treatments are at an extra charge and the therapists have a strong reputation, so book your slots early in your stay, and ideally before the golfers claim the late afternoons.

Keeping active at Jaz Makadi Star & Spa

• Gym, included for hotel guests
• Floodlit tennis court
• Beach volleyball
• Table tennis, billiards and table soccer
• Darts and boccia
• Aerobics sessions
• Squash and padel nearby, at a charge
• Camel riding along the bay, at a charge

Golf on your doorstep

Golfers are spoiled here. The Madinat Makadi Golf course, an 18 hole championship layout designed by John Sanford, unrolls through the desert landscape a short buggy ride from reception and has repeatedly been named among Egypt’s best courses, with a 9 hole academy course alongside for rusty swings. Green fees are payable locally, and we can point you to tee time booking with your quote, so mention golf when you call.

Madinat Makadi is its own small world: a landscaped resort village wrapped around a sheltered bay on the Red Sea coast, about 30 kilometres south of Hurghada Airport. Within its gates you will find the golf course, the Mividaspa, the dive centre and a clutch of sister hotels, all linked by palm lined walkways, and because Jaz Makadi Star sits in the heart of it, everything is reachable on foot or by the village shuttle.

Souk Makadi, your evening stroll

Less than ten minutes’ walk away, Souk Makadi is the village high street: more than a hundred shops and stalls selling everything from Egyptian cotton to jewellery, alongside cafes, bars, a pharmacy and ATMs. It gives the resort something most self contained hotels lack, somewhere to wander after dinner that is not another lap of the lobby.

How far is Jaz Makadi Star from the airport and Hurghada?

Straight answers to the questions our customers ask most before booking Jaz Makadi Star & Spa in Makadi Bay. If yours is not covered, call us free and ask a specialist who has sold this resort for years.