Hurghada is the most popular gateway to the mainland Red Sea and one of Egypt's big sun, beach and diving destinations. What half a century ago was a modest fishing village is today a long string of resorts, marinas and beaches stretching for kilometres along the desert coast, with a turquoise sea full of coral reefs and colourful fish just a few metres from the shore. It's the ideal place to switch off in an all-inclusive hotel, learn to dive or simply lie in the sun with good weather guaranteed almost all year round.
Unlike Sharm el-Sheikh, which is in Sinai, Hurghada is on the mainland, making it a handy base for combining the beach with the Egypt of the pharaohs: Luxor and its temples are a few hours away by road, so many travellers take a one- or two-day trip to the Nile from here. And off the coast lies a string of islands and reefs —Giftun, Orange Bay, Mahmya, Paradise Island— with white sand and clear water perfect for snorkelling.
This guide shows you how to make the most of Hurghada: which boat trips and islands are worth it, where and how to dive safely, which excursions combine well (Luxor, the desert), when to go and what to watch out for. As everywhere on the Red Sea coast, we stress one key point: the diving is wonderful, but it should be done with reputable centres and following the safety rules. With that sorted, Hurghada is a sea holiday that's hard to beat for price and ease.
Hurghada is a young city. It was founded in the early 20th century as a small settlement linked to oil extraction on the Red Sea coast, and for decades it was little more than a village of fishermen and oil workers. Its transformation came in the eighties and nineties, when Egypt pushed tourist development on the Red Sea coast and Hurghada, with its reefs and its climate, became one of the country's big sun-and-beach hubs. Growth was explosive: in a few decades it went from village to a city of hundreds of thousands of people, with an international airport receiving charter flights from all over Europe. Alongside it, planned enclaves sprang up, such as El Gouna, a resort town built from scratch in the nineties. The history of the Red Sea and Hurghada is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Egypt of coral reefs and the holy mountain: the Red Sea's diving resorts and a biblical peninsula that Africa and Asia have fought over for thousands of years.
Read the history of The Red Sea and Sinai →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Hurghada was a name in holiday brochures, the western coast of the Red Sea was one of the most inhospitable regions of Egypt, and also one of the busiest. Inhospitable, because it is a strip of desert with almost no fresh water, wedged between the arid Red Sea Mountains and the sea. Busy, because for thousands of years that sea was a major trade route connecting Egypt with Arabia, the Horn of Africa, India and the world of incense and spices.
The ancient Egyptians were already venturing into these waters. From ports on the coast they sent sea expeditions to the legendary Land of Punt, bringing back gold, ivory, ebony, myrrh and incense. The female pharaoh Hatshepsut recorded one of these voyages in the reliefs of her temple at Deir el-Bahari, in Thebes. In the nearby mountains, people worked gold mines and quarries of precious stones and granite. The Greeks and Romans kept using these ports for trade with the East.
The name of the Red Sea itself has always been a puzzle. It may refer to the reddish colour its waters sometimes take on when certain algae bloom, or to the reddish mountains along its shores, or to an old system of naming the cardinal points by colours. Beneath its surface, and unvalued by anyone at the time, grew one of the richest coral reef systems on the planet: the treasure that, centuries later, would completely change the fate of this coast.
Modern Hurghada was born from oil, not tourism. In the early 20th century, when oil fields were discovered and developed along the Red Sea coast, a small settlement grew up here around that industry and around fishing. For decades, Hurghada (Al-Ghardaqa in Arabic) was little more than a modest village of oil workers and fishermen, cut off in the middle of the desert and of no great importance.
The big turning point came in the last third of the 20th century. From the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, the Egyptian government committed firmly to turning the Red Sea coast into a major international tourist destination. It counted on sunshine almost all year round, the beaches and, above all, the extraordinary coral reefs. Hotels went up, along with an international airport and all the infrastructure needed, and the first charter flights began arriving, full of European tourists eager for sun, beaches and cheap diving.
The growth was explosive and, in many ways, chaotic. In just two or three decades, Hurghada went from village to a city of several hundred thousand people, with a strip of hotels that now runs along dozens of kilometres of coast. That rapid expansion brought prosperity and jobs, but also haphazard urban planning and pressure on a fragile natural environment, especially on the reefs that are, ironically, the whole reason the place took off.
Hurghada's boom was not an isolated case. It was part of a wider transformation of the whole Red Sea coast, where projects planned from the top down appeared next to the city's unplanned growth. The best-known example is El Gouna, a resort town built entirely from scratch from the 1990s onwards by a private developer, on a stretch of coast north of Hurghada. Using natural lagoons and dug-out canals, the developer created a kind of low-rise resort town in a Mediterranean-Nubian style, which soon earned the nickname 'Venice of the Red Sea'.
El Gouna offers a different model from mass-market Hurghada: a well-kept enclave with boutique hotels, marinas, golf courses, a hospital, an international school and its own cultural and sporting life, aimed at wealthier tourists and foreign residents. Around it, other planned enclaves such as Sahl Hasheesh, Makadi Bay and Soma Bay rounded out the area's choice of luxury resorts.
This model of all-in-one development, with the coast split into fairly self-contained tourist 'bubbles', became typical of Egypt's Red Sea. It gives visitors safety, comfort and first-class services. The downside is that the experience is often cut off from real Egyptian life and culture, which you'll only find if you step outside the resorts into neighbourhoods like El Dahar or take trips inland.
For better and for worse, Hurghada's fate is tied to its coral reefs. They are the reason millions of tourists choose this coast, and also one of its most fragile resources. Rapid tourist development put enormous pressure on the marine ecosystem: building along the shore, waste discharges, too many boats, divers and snorkellers who touch or stand on the coral, and the capture or feeding of marine life. On top of this comes the global threat of climate change, which causes coral bleaching as water temperatures rise. Even so, Red Sea corals are among the most heat-tolerant on the planet. That makes them a subject of scientific study and a possible reserve for the future of the world's coral.
Knowing that without reefs there is no tourism, the Egyptian authorities and the more responsible operators have gradually brought in protective measures: marine protected areas, conservation fees, mooring rules to avoid damaging the seabed, and campaigns asking visitors not to touch the coral or disturb the wildlife. Little by little, sustainability has become a question of economic survival as well as an environmental one.
Today Hurghada is firmly established as one of the main engines of Egyptian tourism. It has had ups and downs linked to the political and security situation in the country and the region, but it has shown a remarkable ability to bounce back. It combines two faces: a big sun-and-beach destination that suits European budgets, and a real Egyptian city, lived in and hard-working, facing a sea whose true treasure is still, as always, beneath the surface.
