On most coasts this is a close call. On this one the charter flights tilt it — and the honest answer for divers is a hybrid almost nobody suggests.
Most destinations make this a straight trade: a package buys convenience at a premium, and doing it yourself is cheaper if you can be bothered. This coast is not most destinations, because a very large share of the seats here are charters sold as part of a package. That changes the arithmetic rather than the convenience, and it is why advice that works for a European city break does not transfer.
What follows is not an argument for either. It is an account of which decisions a package makes on your behalf, which of them actually matter here, and the one it makes badly.
A first week, a resort bay, not diving
A package
It is genuinely good value here, it removes every decision you have no basis for making yet, and the things it chooses badly barely affect a week spent mostly inside one hotel.
Divers
A package, but book the diving yourself
This is the answer almost nobody suggests and it is the right one for most people. Take the charter seat and the hotel; ignore the in-house centre and the lobby desk, and choose your own centre on its own merits. Nothing about a package obliges you to dive with the hotel.
Going in October, November or early December
Book it yourself
The best weeks of the year are the ones with the thinnest charter programmes. If the month guides have convinced you to travel then, the package market is working against you.
Heading to El Quseir, the far south, or anywhere small
Book it yourself
Packages serve the big contracted resorts. The places this site keeps recommending for quiet are mostly not in the brochures, and the transfer is longer — which is its own argument for arranging a car you chose.
A late-evening arrival with children
Either, but pay for the transfer
Whichever way you book, the leg from the airport in the dark is the most dangerous part of the trip and the one a package prices to the floor. It is the single upgrade worth buying.
The hybrid is worth repeating because it is the part people miss: a package is a flight, a bed and a transfer, and none of it obliges you to buy anything else from the same company. Financial protection rules differ by country and are worth checking against your own market rather than taken from a guide — one of the questions the insurance page suggests putting in writing.
Last reviewed 26 July 2026. We take no commission from either side — how we make money. Disagree with a call? Tell us why.