Changes in El Gouna…
Weather in El Gouna is (of course) sunny, quite some windy those last days, and temperatures of about 36° C at day and 29° C at night.
Remarkable changes in El Gouna I noticed during the first days of my recent visit:
- finally adequate public toilets at Tammr Henna and the Marina
- new road constructions between El Gouna Hospital and Arena Inn
- a lot of new pedestrian sidewalks completed or renewed
- the wall around “Pino’s Project” nearly completed
- construction of the American University of Cairo advance well
- construction of the El Gouna International School advance also
- less construction workers in El Gouna (after authorities redefined entry permission levels to locals)
- remarkable less traffic on the roads in El Gouna
- heavier checkpoint barriers at strategic points in El Gouna
- a bunch of new shops and businesses opened between the busstation and Orascom Building
- The restaurant Fils de l’Eau stopped, now at the same place the Oriental Grill
- backdrop in number of tourists (due to end of holidays or in the aftermath of the Sharm attacks?)
A note from the Editor
There are still a bunch of other articles waiting to be published allthough the appropriate interviews were made during last stay in June and July. Reason for this delay is that the possible future role of El Gouna Times has to be redefined.
El Gouna Times wanted to go into three directions…
- a multilingual forum; however, only the german forum is slowly taking off right now,
- a photo album that contains already some 5,000 pictures related to El Gouna,
- an editorial part with today roughly 300 articles, divided into several categories, and of which the classified ads have become the most visited information source.
After 4 months of pre-release version of the El Gouna Times, in which we’ve served well over 400,000 Pageviews and 1,150,000 Hits to about 30,000 different Computer ID’s with a total amount of about 9 GigaBytes of delivered datatraffic, we have to conclude that interactivity between the residents, tourists and our editorial staff is not or hardly present.
Therefor we will redefine the future version of El Gouna Times to improve interactivity.
Because without interactivity, no El Gouna Times anymore…
September 10th, 2005 at 08:15
Hi,
I think this is a brilliant site. As a prospective home owner in El Gouna, I regularly scan the site, hoping for any more information I can find. It has been an endless source of information and I am very grateful to you for that.
Possibly why the forums have not taken off yet is because its possibly seen still as a “pre release” version, and perhaps some people (myself included), think the forums are not yet properly up and running yet. I’m sure once a few people have posted it will start the ball rolling! I realise that the adverts are up and running (having posted one myself), but also after seeing the initial input from I think PnP Property, with all their rental list but then it never being updated, perhaps some people still think they have to wait for the “live” version.
I personally think it would be very hard to improve the site - I’m very impressed.
May see you around as we are in El Gouna Friday 30th September till Friday 7th October.
Please keep up the good work.
Regards Penny
September 10th, 2005 at 17:40
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2005 3:20 PM
Subject: the times
Dear Hubert. september already in Fife, Scotland, and the central heating has been on for the last 2 days, it’s now we miss the weather in el-Gouna, Wind or no Wind!!
You may be a bit unsatisfied at the moment with the way the TIMES is going, but i can assure everyone, Visitors, Owners and Businesses, and anyone in the world who has any interest in el-gouna and that area of Egypt to give you all the support they can.
As future owners it was great to contact a person who takes an interest on the developing town, and takes the time to photograph the building work. Without you and your team we still wouldn’t know what stage the Building was or what it looked like, as we like many, work, and decided to keep most of the holidays for the completion.
We keep on re- visiting the Times and Surf the contents regularly, so to every one reading this , again a sincere Thank-You and keep up the great job!!
September 11th, 2005 at 13:15
Site is very good and informative it keeps us up to date when we are not in El Gouna. However I only found it because I picked up your card in one of the shops perhaps it should be listed in the regular El Gouna magazine that we get.
Can we start to include information on thefts. We have a villa on the Hill and there have been 2 thefts of laptops from villas on the Hill in March & July so far this year. Also we had theft from our villa of a mobile phone and small items.
It would be interesting to hear what other thefts (if any) have occured this year as Mr Sawiris personal assistant did not appear to be aware of these incidents when we told him.
On a positive note the Angsana Spa is open and I can only say the treatments were excellent. Need to however work on relaxation prior to the treatment as normally in spas such as the Banyan Tree you get to enjoy a sauna or pool either before or after your treatment. Maybe that this just wasn’t open yet when we went in August.
Also might be worth mentioning that Egyptair are now flying to Luxor from Hurghada on a Monday & Wednesday which will actually allow you time to stay in Luxor for a few nights and enjoy all the sights rather than having to try and fit it into one day.
For the British out there Excel Airways have started doing flights from Birmingham to Hurghada in November on a Friday which makes it even easier for us to access El Gouna.
Anyway keep up the good work and we’ll keep logging in regularly
September 25th, 2005 at 13:54
As an absentee owner of two properties in Gouna, I definately have an interest. I regularly visit your site and can’t wait to retire one day in Gouna and contribute to it’s community. I am probably still three years away from that goal.
Regarding flights to Hurghada. You may all already know, that GB Airways, a British Airways Partner, is comencing regular flights, twice a week, from Gatwick beginning Oct 22nd.
Keep up the good work