Nader Hussein

When you initiate a travel plan with Kimkim, the company will assign you to a local agency who makes all the travel arrangements for you. The price was steep and was a black box, there was no breakdown when I asked for it. I should have stopped by this hint.

The agency works with certain hotels that give them an agency rate that’s lower than the consumer rate. They put me in fairmont, an Arab owned establishment. The problem was that they have a party every other night hosted by the Arabian Club/ casino (yes hotel has a casino) until 3 am. The noise could be heard from the highest floor of hotel(20th). For the Cairo Representative he was very nice but didn’t speak much English. I was a little devastated by the difficulties of communication as I just arrived in a foreign country. The tour guides, their English are mostly heavily accented. At the end or middle of the tour days, they take you to commissioned shops for overpriced and roughly made souvenirs (not included in the itinerary, you are on your own to defend from the hard sell ). The extra events are also marked up with a lot of room for the guide/company. For example the hot air balloon at Luxor is marked up very steep, for 140USD per person, if you book through the hot air balloon business directly, you can easily get a quote at 30 USD/person. It is a very dark industry with people who are careless about your wellbeing.

The flight returning home was a breaking point for me. You pay everything with a fat margin but you don’t get the best in line, or not even a professional service. The Egypt agency(Egypt Promotions) was careless as to mistaking the flight times to return home. After the first negotiation, they refused to book the flight for me. They think it is my fought for not checking the travel plan they made. Told me that I should buy another ticket out of my own pocket(3000usd). After desperate attempts to battle with the agency. they were finally able to change the flight for me when they discovered that the airline can put me on the same flight for only 300 usd, a discounted price. (I bought business) Perhaps also fearing that kimkim will no longer send them quality clients. egypt has its enchantment but the business is rotten. During the entire event kimkim did not care to reach me via phone or to apologize.

A dark price breakdown:
I paid kimkim 5000usd for 7days in Egypt, not including flights.
fairmont hotel was 200usd/night on Expedia agency should have better price.
200*4nights=800usd
Tour guide + driver: 64 usd/day*5days=320usd
Movenpick cruise: 400usd/day *3= 1200usd

Total paid: 5000
Total cost from agency: 800+320+1200= 2320
They earned about $2700 from me on this trip.

If I booked on my own I could have stayed at four seasons or at St Regis (best line of hotel in Cairo with much better service and no noise from casino/club) and an upper deck suite at movenpick. And I will still have surplus.

And it is a shame that I had to flight for my ticket back home. I was on the edge of experiencing a full mental breakdown at the airport.
If you decide to travel to Egypt, it’s best to book the hotel by yourself, tours with a local company separately.