The sun is setting over El Gouna’s shoreline, bathing its domed houses and twisting lagoons in golden light.
I’m walking in the shallows, a quarter mile from the Egyptian coast, when I look at the Red Sea oasis and consider the contradiction I’d been wrestling with for days — I was in a beautiful place that didn’t feel historic, but didn’t feel new.
‘It’s strange here isn’t it?’ says Ben, another guest who had walked out with me. ‘It feels fake and real at the same time’.
I knew exactly what he meant.
When too many tourists ruin a destination
When I first heard about El Gouna and its goal to create a place that counters the harmful effcts of mass tourism, I thought of the first time I visited Marrakech in Morocco, nearly 30 years ago.
I remember being so enchanted by the city, its cultural richness, its intensity, the smells of the spices and the markets ablaze with lights and sounds well into the night. To my eight-year-old eyes, it was so unfamiliar that it felt magical.
Fast forward to today and Marrakech attracts four million visitors a year, its narrow streets bursting with Airbnbs and tourist deals. The ‘Red City’ is a textbook example of how tourism can overwhelm a place, commercialising traditional cultures and draining identity. It’s no surprise it has all but vanished from the must-visit lists of seasoned travellers.
This is the dilemma facing many who work in travel. Tourism brings in money and boosts the economy, but it comes at a cost. Authenticity begins to fade. Locals are forced out due to rising prices. Heritage sites get damaged.
How do we allow tourism to thrive without erasing the very things that attract visitors in the first place? Several destinations have tried to limit numbers, while others attempt to strike a balance.
Places like El Gouna promise something different.
This man-made oasis draws tourists away from the classic hotspots of Luxor and Aswan to artificial lagoons on the Red Sea. No local communities or cultures are impacted, it is largely self-sustainable, and visitors are satisfied with the warmth of the Egyptian sun, delicious food and striking architecture that mimics traditional Nubian towns.
With interest piqued, I took a five-hour flight from London to nearby Hurghada to visit El Gouna and see if it could be the model for more sustainable tourism.
An artificial oasis
Some 400km south of Cairo and its symbolic Pyramids, El Gouna is an infant in Egyptian terms, a 30-year-old town on the shores of the Red Sea, full of man-made lagoons that swirl through neighbourhoods dotted with residential apartments, restaurants and hotels.
At first glance, it looks like a project still very much in development. The finished areas with their beautiful Nubian-inspired buildings contrast dramatically with empty construction sites, where freshly dug lagoons resemble quarries more than luxury resorts.
Driving in on the airport road, where we see more of the latter, I can’t get the word ‘artificial’ out of my head. I find myself wondering, could a destination like this really be the answer to the damage wrought by mass tourism? Who would be swayed by this?
But as we go deeper into more developed parts of El Gouna, the scenery became natural. People interact like they would in a real town, and multi-coloured kite surfers dot the horizon.
The longer the trip lasts, the more impressive it all becomes, and the more I begin to admire the scale and vision behind it.
There’s an intentional effort to make this place appealing to people like me who would normally avoid resort towns. There are no skyscrapers here. The architecture follows a strict style with a clear colour palette and every roof is domed, creating a convincing illusion of an ancient town.
The main marina does this particularly well. Walking through the streets at night, past swaying palm trees and an abundance of restaurants that are fast turning El Gouna into an international culinary destination, I find myself believing in its authenticity, almost as though I was in a coastal Mediterranean town.
I’m usually a budget traveller, more accustomed to hostels and tents than luxury suites. And while El Gouna is making moves to attract eco-conscious visitors like me, its current crowd is unmistakably high-end, if the number of elegant hotels throughout the town is anything to go by.
A luxury retreat that feels surprisingly authentic
We stay in Casa Cook, one of a collection of boutique beach resorts. Within seconds of arriving, I see the essence of what El Gouna is trying to achieve across the whole town.
Rustic with a minimalist aesthetic, the hotel balances authenticity with luxury, with architecture that takes inspiration from Egyptian culture but is presented with Mediterranean flair.
Cavernous rooms open onto semi-private pools shared with a neighbour, reflecting the Nubian concept of communal living. Chefs in the restaurant cook with local ingredients, and desert plants line the paths to the sea — a nod to the deep Nubian connection to nature.
In truth, once I switch off my critical mind, I realise that I’ve rarely felt more relaxed than I do at Casa Cook. Sitting by the pool with a cocktail in hand, trying some beautifully crafted dishes from the two on-site restaurants or wandering through the tranquil grounds, it’s easy to fall for its charms.
With the Red Sea on one side and desert mountains on the other, I’m surrounded by formidable landscape that is very much real.
El Gouna’s Green Credentials
El Gouna claims to be a sustainable town, with campaigns that regularly trumpet its UN-sponsored Green Town Award which it won in 2014, the first African town to do so.
I ask our guide how sustainable this place really is. He told me how 20% of the city’s energy comes from a local solar power plant, it recycles 85% of its waste and has a desalination system to turn the Red Sea water into drinkable freshwater, among other initiatives. Many of the buildings even have smart AC systems that reduce cooling if the room reaches a certain temperature, saving on energy.
It’s a sales pitch designed to impress eco-conscious travellers, but is it truly a model for sustainable tourism?
I’m not entirely convinced. The hanging silence when I ask where the other 80% of energy comes from, or how much energy it would take to maintain the desalination process if El Gouna continued to grow, did not inspire confidence.
There’s no doubt that it’s off to a great start, but as it expands, whether it stays true to its eco-friendly mission or succumbs to the same pitfalls as other tourist hubs remains to be seen.
Does it deliver?
There is a quietness in El Gouna that feels worlds away from the chaos in Aswan or Cairo, where car horns blast perpetually through the night. At Casa Cook, I find myself walking for ages through the grounds or the miles of its shallow shore in peaceful solitude, barely crossing paths with any of the other 100 guests.
The word ‘artificial’ creeps into my head again, but this time, for a different reason.
The hotel and marina successfully fooled me into thinking I was visiting a place built centuries ago, but it worked because the worst of mass tourism had been engineered out. There are no high-rise hotels in sight, it never feels overcrowded, and no community has been displaced to build a resort.
El Gouna is artificial, but it somehow manages to recreate the peaceful Nubian culture that is a rarity to find in modern Egypt.
El Gouna is everything I normally dislike: a resort town with luxury hotels and a lack of historical depth. But, in large pockets of the town, it manages to deliver on its promise: an environmentally friendly, luxury alternative which still somehow feels Egyptian.
It is a paradox; both fake and real, artificial yet oddly convincing.
But paradox or not, El Gouna got me thinking. It’s not the pyramids and never will be, but maybe it’s a glimpse of a more sustainable future for tourism.
Things to do in El Gouna
There’s plenty to do outside your hotel in El Gouna.
One of the most popular activities is kite surfing, with schools dotted all over the coastline. The Red Sea offers world-class snorkelling opportunities, spectacular coral reefs and plenty of dolphins. If you want a taste of the desert, there are quad bike tours into the mountains for sunset with a local Bedouin community. In the town, there are two impressive golf courses and plenty of restaurants along the marina. If you’re visiting in October, grab a ticket for the famous El Gouna Film Festival.
Jeremy Ullmann was a guest of Casa Cook El Gouna. Rooms start from €300 per night, including breakfast.
