Sataya Resort Marsa Alam

Accommodation at Sataya Resort Marsa Alam runs to around 480 rooms and suites, arranged in low rise blocks among the gardens and pools rather than stacked into towers. The finish is calm and contemporary, and every category comes with air conditioning, a flat screen TV, tea and coffee making facilities, a minibar, a safe, Wi-Fi and a balcony or terrace with outdoor furniture.

Almost everyone we send to Sataya Resort Marsa Alam travels all inclusive, and the package is straightforward and generous. Buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner are served at AIDA, the main restaurant, snacks fill the gaps in between, and selected soft drinks plus local beer, wine, spirits and cocktails are poured from 10am until midnight. You wear a wristband, drinks after midnight and imported labels are payable locally, and that is about all the small print there is.

On the a la carte side, one speciality dinner per week of your stay at Spago or the beachfront Pizzeria is included with an advance reservation, while Tayio, the sushi and teppanyaki restaurant, carries a supplement. Allowances do change season to season, so we confirm the exact dining package with your quote.

What all inclusive covers

• Buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner at AIDA with live cooking stations
• Snacks and lighter bites through the day
• Soft drinks, local beer, wine, spirits and cocktails from 10am to midnight
• One a la carte dinner per week at Spago or the Pizzeria, booked ahead

The restaurants

Bars at Sataya

• Aura, the lobby bar, for daytime coffee, tea and mocktails
• La Terrasse, a seasonal open air cocktail lounge from 5pm to midnight
• Sea Breeze, the beach bar, from morning until sunset
• Lazy Lee, the swim up pool bar
• Fuego, the late venue, with a live DJ after dark

Swimming pools thread through the gardens between the accommodation blocks, so nowhere at the resort is far from a swim. There is a lively main pool for daytime energy, a calmer relaxation pool served by the Lazy Lee swim up bar, and plenty of deck in between, lined with loungers, parasols and bamboo thatched cabanas.

Winter is where the pools at Sataya Resort Marsa Alam earn extra credit. Some are heated through the cooler months, and with daytime temperatures on this coast usually in the low to mid twenties from November to March, a January swim here is a genuine pleasure rather than a dare. The sea stays warm enough to snorkel all year too, so wetsuit hire from the dive centre is a nicety rather than a necessity.

If you prefer your water salty, the beach and jetty are covered in the next tab, and Family Swim Up rooms come with their own shared pool reached straight from the terrace.

The beach runs along the resort’s frontage in soft sand, with loungers and thatched cabanas facing the water and the Sea Breeze bar keeping everyone topped up until sunset. It is a proper laze all day beach, but the reason people cross Europe to get here starts where the sand stops.

Snorkelling at Sataya Resort Marsa Alam

The house reef sits inside the Abu Dabbab marine park and is reached from the resort’s own jetty in a couple of minutes on foot. There are two ways in. The first set of steps drops into a shallow, sandy bottomed natural lagoon inside the coral platform, calm enough for less confident swimmers to get comfortable with a mask. The second entry, at the end of the jetty, puts you straight over the reef edge where the coral wall falls away into blue.

The coral here is in genuinely good condition, varied and colourful, with giant clams tucked into the reef and clouds of surgeonfish, parrotfish, butterflyfish and angelfish working the wall. Hawksbill turtles are regular visitors to the reef flat, and our customers tell us a single lazy circuit of the jetty can fill a memory card.

Diving from the resort

The on site dive centre sits right on the sand with direct access to the jetty, and caters for everyone from first bubbles to experienced wreck and wall divers. Expect try dives and courses, unlimited house reef packages, night dives, and boat and speedboat trips out to Abu Dabbab’s dive sites and the legendary walls of Elphinstone Reef. Snorkellers can join most boat trips, which keeps mixed groups happy. Diving, courses and equipment are payable locally rather than included in the all inclusive board.

After a few days of reef time, the Wellbeing Spa is where the salt gets steamed out. The line up covers a traditional Turkish style hammam, sauna and steam bath, a menu of massages and facials, aromatic baths and a beauty salon, with a run of treatment rooms and relaxation areas to disappear into for an afternoon.

Treatments are payable locally rather than included in the all inclusive package, and in our experience the therapists here are kept busy, so book your slot a day or two ahead rather than wandering in hopeful at 4pm. A hammam and massage on a mid stay afternoon, timed for when your shoulders have done a week of finning, is money well spent.

For the more energetic there is a fitness centre with modern equipment, and the swimming itself, off the jetty or lane laps before breakfast, tends to keep most guests honest. Sataya Resort Marsa Alam is not a place anyone leaves less rested than they arrived.

The resort sits on the coast road in the Abu Dabbab area of the southern Red Sea, about 30 km south of Marsa Alam International Airport, with Port Ghalib marina up near the airport and Marsa Alam town further down the coast. This stretch is desert, reef and open sea rather than resort strip, and the hotel is self contained by design. There is nothing meaningful to walk to outside the gates, and for most of our customers that is precisely the appeal.

Days out from Sataya Resort Marsa Alam

Abu Dabbab Bay, ten minutes away, is one of the Red Sea’s most famous snorkelling beaches, its seagrass meadow grazed by green turtles and, if your luck is in, the rare dugong. By boat, divers head for the sheer walls of Elphinstone Reef, while Shaab Samadai, the Dolphin House lagoon near Marsa Alam, is a favourite day trip for swimmers hoping to see spinner dolphins. Committed dolphin chasers can go one better with a full day at Sataya Reef itself, the remote crescent lagoon the resort is named after. We arrange guided excursions to all of these, priced with your quote.

Getting here is simple. Direct flights serve Marsa Alam from the UK, transfers with meet and greet are included in our quotes, and you can be checking in well under an hour after landing. Many of our customers also twin a week here with a Nile cruise from Luxor, which pairs reef mornings with temple sunrises in one holiday, and we are happy to build that for you.

The questions our Egypt specialists answer most often about Sataya Resort Marsa Alam, from dining allowances to turtles. If yours is not here, call us and ask a human who knows the resort.