Skip to content
hurghada.news

El Quseir

A genuinely old port town 140km south of Hurghada — an Ottoman fort, a working harbour, and the closest thing this coast has to history you can walk through.

El Quseir has been a port for a very long time. Pharaonic expeditions to Punt are thought to have sailed from near here, it was a principal embarkation point for pilgrims crossing to Mecca for centuries, and the Ottoman fort still standing in the centre was built in the 16th century and later fought over by the French and the British.

None of that has been turned into a theme. The old town is small, low, coral-block and quiet, the harbour still works, and the fort is a modest museum you can see properly in an hour. It is the only place on this coast where the buildings are older than the tourism.

The tourism that does exist is low-key and mostly strung along the coast outside town: a handful of hotels, several of them diving-focused, on some of the best shore-accessible reef in Egypt.

Suits you if

  • Divers, particularly anyone who prefers shore diving to boat days
  • Travellers who want an actual town with actual history
  • Quiet holidays and repeat visitors to the Red Sea looking for something different

Probably not if

  • Anyone wanting nightlife or choice
  • First-time visitors on a short trip — the transfers eat into a week
  • Families needing organised entertainment

The practical shape of it

Getting there
Hurghada International (HRG) is about 2 hours north; Marsa Alam (RMF) is about 1 hour 15 south. Check which airport your flight uses — the difference is significant.
Beach and sea
Excellent, and underrated. The reef comes close to shore along much of this stretch, which makes for outstanding house-reef diving and snorkelling without boats. Several hotels here are built around exactly that. Water clarity is typically better than the busier northern bays.
Evenings
Modest. A few local restaurants in town, hotel dining outside it, and quiet nights. This is not somewhere you go out.
What it costs
Low to moderate. Diving in particular is better value here than in Hurghada, and the hotels are generally smaller and less expensive than the big-bay resorts.
When to come
October to May. It stays warm later in the year than the northern towns.

The catch

It is a long way from an airport, and there is very little to do that is not in the sea. Two hours from Hurghada each way is a serious bite out of a one-week trip, and if the diving is not the point of your holiday, El Quseir will feel like a very quiet place to have travelled a long way for.

Nearby

  • The Ottoman fort and old harbour, in the centre of town
  • Marsa Alam and Port Ghalib, about an hour south
  • Wadi Hammamat and the desert road to the Nile, historically the route to Coptos

Listed in El Quseir

Hotels and resorts 15Dive centres 4Restaurants 8Cafés 1Bars 11Things to do 1Local services 1

Last reviewed 25 July 2026. Transfer times and what is open change. Something out of date? Tell us.

Also near here

The rest of what this site has anchored to this town — the wrecks and spots in its bay, the trips that run from it, and how it compares to its neighbours. (The dive sites are listed above.)

Snorkelling

  • El Quseir house reefsShore entry

    The coast’s most underrated shore snorkelling — reef close in, water clearer than the north, and almost nobody in it.

Send this to someoneWhatsAppTelegramFacebookX

El Quseir in the news