I'm a seasoned traveler, particularly in Africa, and am used to truly roughing it and having all strata of budget and mid-range hotel experiences. I chose this hotel for a week holiday for my aunt who was visiting me while I was living in Cairo. The decor and architectural theme is charming and the staff is largely made up of an army of polite and hardworking teenage boys. The cleanliness was excellent, but the service was middling depending on who was serving you and in what situation. The free breakfast had spotty service, but the open air/garden restaurant and bar had excellent service during dinner. The ambiance of the restaurant was exceptionally pleasant.

The worst service, however, was from the cold, arrogant, and unhelpful onsite manager who I understand may also be a business partner in the venture. He was very unhelpful and dismissive of possible activities if one were not up for the full packaged tour with an expensive guide arranged by the hotel. Any questions arising from our stay, if addressed by him, was carried out with rudeness and made the visit turn from quaint and relaxing on the West Bank to constantly trying to avoid running into the manager and dealing with his bad attitude.

The design of the rooms was very nice and quaint and must make it cool and pleasant in the summer, i.e. the low season, but in the winter it was unbearably cold. My aunt and I slept with all the covers available and in long pajamas with our coats on. There are split-vac A/C units, but they did not opt to have the heating unit option placed in them as well, which I found surprising given that high season is in the winter and spring when the weather is much cooler at night. We are also not cold climate wimps as we hail from the Rocky Mountains and are accustomed to the cold.

Another annoyance were the sheets that were not long enough to be tucked under the mattress so we inevitably woke up with sheets wrapped around us. With the very loud mosque speakers giving the call to prayer at 5am (can't be helped in Egypt anyway) it made for a very poor night's sleep.

I really wanted to like this hotel and were they to install space heaters or opt for the dual A/C and heating split vacs I think it would be very tolerable in the high season. I'm not sure what can be done about the manager, though.

Myself and a group of my post-graduate students spent twelve days in Egypt as part of an annual field trip, which included four days in Luxor. The Sheherazade hotel was a great place for us to stay: a very nice building in Arabian style; a large garden with a bar and outdoor restaurant; good breakfast; nice rooms cleaned every day with the towels changed as well; perfect and very friendly service, always ready to help; one of the best locations available in the West Bank of Luxor, a few hundred meters from the Nile; very good rates … in short, the best hotel experience for a very reasonable price. I would suggest a stay in this wonderful hotel.
Riccardo Lufrani

Great staff, good food and friendly atmosphere. Comfortable air conditioned rooms. Clean and comfortable beds and service unmatched aynywhere else on our trip.
Good areas for group activities and lots to be involved in during our stay. The donkey ride was great and it is close to a lot of interesting archilogical sites and the Nile river

I’ve read that the owner designed and recently built this hotel and you can feel both the personal investment and the sense that this hotel may continue to evolve as he develops it. (I believe the owner is thinking of adding a swimming pool, for example as well as another wing of sleeping rooms). When we stayed here in November 2010, we found ourselves thinking of / describing Hotel Sheherazade as a small, satisfying, low-frills (cash only) resort – a good fit for mid-range, independent travelers and an excellent, easy-to-get to option away from the chaos, noise, and pressure that we found on the East Bank.

The rooms are spacious, clean, and charming, with high brick domed ceilings and thoughtful details like the cut glass charms on the reading lights. The bathrooms were also large and very comfortable – hot water, strong water pressure, good towels, and very, very clean. Rooms include both a ceiling fan and air conditioning – both worked perfectly. Though I had a confirmation for a double bed, we got twin beds pushed together – comfortable but a little bit of a let down. The hotel complex includes a garden with scattered iron tables and chairs and a cool, low-cushioned gazebo as well as a shady breakfast area favored by those lingering over tea to plan their day - as well as two cats and lots of flies (consider yourself warned). Lunch, snacks, dinner and alcohol are available for fair prices in the garden or breakfast area; a fairly basic bread / tea / yogurt breakfast is included in the room rate.

Consistent with the resort metaphor, prices for goods were a higher inside the hotel rather than outside (think bottles of water, taxis) but as you might expect, if you go outside, you then must negotiate and have little recourse if the quality isn’t what you expect / want. As an example, we used the hotel to arrange a personalized tour of Luxor highlights, and while pricier than if we had hired our own car, we wouldn’t have been nearly as efficient in seeing / learning / doing all that we wanted to do (and we wouldn’t have befriended our awesome guide, Yassir.) The flexibility of being able to see the things you want to see, in as much depth as you want, with a driver at your disposal is more expensive than a packaged tour, but we thought it was worth it.

One word of note about transportation to/from the hotel – it’s very easy to get back and forth between the East and West Bank. If you are flying into Luxor Airport, you’ll pay more than you might think for the taxi directly to / from the hotel. This makes sense since the drive to the airport includes a long (but beautiful) ride to the only bridge 7 km south of town. If you’re taking the train into Luxor and don’t have much luggage, it’s cheap and fairly easy to walk into town and to the public ferry (2 Egyptian Pounds per person) or to rent a felucca (5-10 Egyptian pounds per boat) to take you across to the hotel. It’s a five minute ride across the river and the hotel is just a five minute walk from where the ferry drops you off.