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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 May 1999 Issue No. 429
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Books Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
El-Gouna: a real community
By Rehab SaadThe word "El-Gouna" has come into wide use in the last four or five years. Friends holiday together in El-Gouna; families spend their weekends in El-Gouna; Amr Diab, a famous Egyptian singer, performs in El-Gouna; and a big celebration took place last month during Shamm Al-Nessim (spring festival) in El-Gouna.
What is it all about? Isn't it just a resort like Hurghada, Safaga, Sharm Al-Sheikh and Dahab?
El-Gouna is many things. It is a resort on the Red Sea, 20kms north of Hurghada which spreads over an area of 11 million sq. metres and has an 11km beach front.
But there is a difference between it and other tourist destinations. It provides much more than the "three S's" (sun, sand and sea) and good hotel management. It is a place that offers services such as schools, nurseries and a hospital as well as various career opportunities. In short, it is a very active community with all the advantages of a seaside resort.
In El-Gouna you are not confined within the boundaries of a hotel, where all you do is eat in the hotel restaurants, be entertained by whatever is featured that night and shop only in the hotel gift shop. Here, you can jump on a free shuttle bus that operates between 9am and 1am, or a shuttle boat that runs from 9am to 4pm and tour around the seven hotels of El-Gouna, and do whatever you want to do.
Imagine being a Mövenpick guest and having your lunch at the Sheraton, getting entertained at the Sonesta and then seeing a film in the Arena, an open-air amphitheatre.
And if you want to escape from hotels altogether, you are at liberty to go to the town area where there are shops, restaurants, a super- market, greengrocer, post office, apartments for rent... in fact all that you would expect to find in any true community.
Built on clusters of islands surrounded by turquoise lagoons, El-Gouna seems to have something for everyone; secluded beaches, desert safaris, the world's best diving spots as well as in-house entertainment and a great night life.
According to El-Gouna's founders, the project began with a romantic vision: friends, boats and a passion for the sea. What started out as a dream evolved into a fully comprehensive resort with luxurious villas, internationally-renowned hotel chains, a wide range of restaurants and a vibrant bustling village.
And then, day by day, El-Gouna developed from a typical seaside resort into a town with a life and soul of its own. Private businesses began to thrive; boutiques, cafés and restaurants opened. And El-Gouna's private sector now includes a brewery, winery and a water-bottling plant.
While it is physically isolated on the Red Sea coast, residents and travellers of El-Gouna can find out what is going on elsewhere. This is because news from the "outside world" is reported locally in both a special quarterly magazine and monthly newspaper. Moreover, Radio El-Gouna 98 FM operates 24 hours a day.
A real community cannot thrive without services. These are things which El-Gouna abounds in. It already has a hospital, private airport, an international school and nursery to serve the rapidly burgeoning community.
The Red Sea resort of El-Gouna offers more than just a beautiful place to get away to. Schools, clinics, shops and families have turned the area into a living, breathing community
photos: Thomas Hartwell
On arrival, I was impressed by its general atmosphere, the scope of the development and, above all, its architectural style. El-Gouna has been built with domes and arches made popular by the late Hassan Fathy. Its buildings blend into the landscape.
Anxious to get an overview of the community, my husband and I were pleased to discover that the shuttle buses operated every 15 minutes.
We chose Kafr (village) El-Gouna -- the town centre of the resort -- as our first port of call. It is set on an island and built in traditional Egyptian style with inner courtyards and endless alleys. The pastel colours of domed buildings were in marked contrast to the bright turquoise of the surrounding lagoons. The kafr provides everything one would expect of a lively town: shops, art galleries, cafés, restaurants, bars, discotheques, a cinema, school, travel agencies, a museum, an aquarium and a post office.
Kafr El-Gouna also provides houses for employees and workers. Interestingly, they are not the eye-sore one has come to expect from workers' accommodations in Nile Valley cities. They do not resemble bland concrete blocks, but have been built in the same style and painted the same colours as the hotels and shops. They, too, blend in with the environment.
El-Gouna has attracted Egyptians and foreigners alike to build new careers. Most shop owners are Egyptians from Upper Egypt, the Delta, and even Cairo and Alexandria, who went in search of a new way of life. Foreigners also have been attracted. Italians and Turks have already established shopping outlets and one Italian couple from Sicily, Romolo Bellomia and Patrizia Guerrera, run the El-Gouna radio station from a small workspace on the second floor of the Al-Balad shopping centre.
The idea came to them nine months ago when they were on holiday there. "The two passions in my life are radios and computers," said Bellomia, who has worked in the radio business for the last 14 years. With the encouragement of Italian friends who had already started businesses in El-Gouna, he decided to turn his dream into a reality. The couple returned to Italy to quit their jobs, buy some radio transmission equipment, pack their suitcases and return to El-Gouna. Now they have introduced the town's first cyber café where travellers and residents can access a reliable Internet service.
Ekkehard Zizmann and his wife Yen, from Germany, are another couple who chose to move to El-Gouna. He was supervising the construction of a brewery there in 1998 when the idea was sown. The couple subsequently travelled widely to places like Kenya, Tanzania, Iran, China, Ghana, Nigeria, Greece and Vietnam before settling in El-Gouna. The sense of community and permanence in the town is very tangible for them as, shortly after arriving, they had their first baby. Now four months old, their daughter was the first child born in the new El-Gouna hospital.
The International School of El-Gouna, which offers both the UK and the Egyptian curricula, also provides a wide range of job opportunities. Its students, representing 10 nationalities, are taught by international staff. The school's headmaster, Gaye Bolton, is British. "This is an exciting school to be in," he said. "Things are really developing. We have 85 pupils now, with plans to accommodate over 500. The children feel part of the school as it becomes more and more a part of the El-Gouna community. We staged a very successful winter bazaar in December, which attracted people from El-Gouna, Hurghada and even Cairo. Next week we will be holding the school's first 'Sports and Family Fun Day' which we hope will be just as successful. By the end of the term there will be an International Day where each class will act as hosts of a different country. They will display crafts, dress in national costumes, serve food made by themselves and entertain the audience with music, songs and dances from around the world." He added that an aim of the school was to display "the wonderful diversity that the school children and their parents represented".
This is a new trend in tourism which Adel Radi, head of the Tourist Development Authority (TDA), is particularly enthusiastic about. He said, "We no longer want to provide hotel facilities or services in isolation at various chosen resorts; we want to establish more integrated centres where tourist facilities and services work hand-in-hand with actual communities. El-Gouna is just one of these centres. We will have more in Southern Sinai, Nabq, Nuweiba and Taba."
More about El-Gouna
* Direct charter flights operate between Cairo and El-Gouna by Orascom aviation on Thursdays and Saturdays as well as on national holidays and feasts.
* First-time visitors to El-Gouna can receive a tour of its facilities. The free guided tour takes two hours and gives the visitor a better idea of all existing and future projects.
* El-Gouna will open an 18-hole USPGA certified golf course this year. The first nine holes are planned to be ready this month and the remainder are scheduled for completion in October.
* Along with the golf course, a five-star golf hotel should be ready by August 1999. An exclusive club house will open this month for serious golfers to relax and dine in style. The hotel will include a pro golf shop where all the latest equipment and apparel can be found.
* A new marina called Abu Tig is under construction north of Sheraton Miramar. It will be ready next year and will be able to moor 100 boats.
* A new super-fast boat called Mikellia now operates in El-Gouna. The vessel takes divers from El-Gouna to Ras Mohamed in just 90 minutes.
