What actually goes wrong here, in the order it actually happens — which is close to the reverse of the order people worry about it.
The ranking is upside down
Search for whether this coast is safe and you get two useless registers: the tabloid one, where the Red Sea is a shark-infested war zone, and the tour-operator one, where nothing has ever gone wrong. Both leave you worrying about the wrong thing. The list below is ordered by how likely each one is to affect an actual trip. Sharks are second from bottom. The drive from the airport is a long way above them.
How often: The most common thing that goes wrong here, by a distance. It affects a meaningful share of visitors on a first trip and almost nobody on a fifth.
This is a desert on a latitude with genuinely fierce sun, and the constant sea breeze removes the sensation of burning while you burn. The classic case is a first-day snorkel: face down, back and calves up, no wind chill, three hours gone. Summer inland — a desert excursion, the drive to Luxor — regularly passes 40°C, and heat exhaustion arrives quietly as a headache and a bad mood before it becomes serious.
What to do about it: Rash vest or T-shirt in the water, which beats reapplying sunscreen and does not end up on the reef. Stay out of open sun between roughly 11 and 3 in summer. Drink more water than feels necessary, especially on a boat where the wind hides the sweat. Take the heat on desert trips more seriously than the beach.
How often: Common, usually mild, and almost never the food poisoning people assume. A day or two, not a trip-ender.
Most cases are the ordinary adjustment to different water, different bacteria and a buffet that has been open a while — not contamination. Buffets that sit warm, ice made from tap water in the cheapest places, and salads rinsed in tap water are the usual culprits, alongside simply eating far more than usual.
What to do about it: Bottled or filtered water, including for teeth in the cheaper properties. Hot food served hot. At a buffet, prefer the dish being actively replenished over the one that has been sitting. See the food guide for how to eat well here without spending the week being careful about everything.
How often: Common among anyone who snorkels or dives more than a couple of times, and the single most frequent reason a visitor sees a doctor here.
The reef is sharp, some of it is venomous, and almost every injury happens because someone stood up. Fire coral burns on contact, sea urchin spines break off in a foot, and stonefish and scorpionfish are superbly camouflaged in exactly the shallow rubble people wade through. Titan triggerfish will chase and bite during nesting season — a genuine and under-warned hazard, not a curiosity.
What to do about it: Do not stand on the reef, ever — it is the whole answer to most of this, and it protects the coral as well as your foot. Reef shoes in shallow entries. Look before putting a hand down. Swim up and away from a triggerfish rather than back along the surface, because their territory is a cone above the nest.
How often: Rarer than the above, and much more serious when it happens. This is the risk most under-weighted by visitors.
Egyptian road fatality rates are high by European standards, and the long desert routes — Hurghada to Cairo, Hurghada to Luxor — have a poor record, particularly at night and particularly for head-on collisions during overtaking. Airport transfer minibuses often have seatbelts that do not work or are tucked away. Quad-bike and buggy desert excursions produce a steady stream of injuries, usually to people who have never ridden one, on loose surfaces, without adequate helmets.
What to do about it: Sit where there is a working seatbelt and use it, including in a transfer bus and including in the back. Prefer daytime for long desert drives, and a proper coach or a reputable private car over the cheapest option. On a quad excursion, insist on a real helmet and stay off the throttle in the loose stuff — most injuries are rollovers, not collisions.
How often: Uncommon, but the most serious category on this page after the road. Almost entirely preventable.
Not sharks. Wind and boats. The prevailing wind here blows offshore along much of the coast, which is why the kiting is world-class and why an inflatable ring, an airbed or a tired swimmer gets pushed away from the beach faster than they can swim back. Boat traffic is heavy around Hurghada and speedboats do not always keep to marked channels. Divers get into trouble by exceeding their training — depth on a wreck, a current they were not briefed for, or a gap of several years since their last dive.
What to do about it: No inflatables where the wind is blowing offshore. Swim parallel to shore, inside marked areas, and tow a surface marker buoy if you swim distances. If you are pushed offshore, do not fight it directly — signal and swim across it. Dive within your certification and be honest with the centre about how long it has been. A refresher dive costs one morning.
How often: Very rare. A handful of incidents across decades against millions of swims a year — but not zero, and this coast has real reasons to take it seriously rather than dismiss it.
The Egyptian Red Sea has had a small number of shark incidents, including fatal ones, concentrated in a few locations and a few years. What makes this coast different from most beach destinations is geography: deep water sits very close to shore in places, so open-ocean species can be near swimmers in a way they never are off a shallow shelf.
What to do about it: The specifics are on their own page, because the subject deserves either a proper answer or none at all.
How often: Low. Violent crime against visitors is genuinely rare, and the resort towns are safer at night than most European cities of the same size.
What visitors actually encounter is persistence rather than danger: sales patter that does not stop at no, taxi fares negotiated after arrival rather than before, a shop trip that becomes a long tea, and card-machine tricks at the point of payment. Opportunistic theft happens where it happens everywhere — busy markets, unattended beach bags.
What to do about it: Agree taxi fares before getting in. Watch the card machine and refuse to be charged in euros. A pleasant, unbroken "la’ shukran" while continuing to walk ends more unwanted conversations than ignoring someone, which is the mistake most visitors make. Tourist police exist in every resort town and are used to being asked.
Emergency numbers, the hyperbaric chambers on this coast, clinics and consular contacts are kept on one maintained page rather than repeated across this section, so there is only ever one copy to keep right.
Emergency numbers and official contacts →This is general guidance from people who live here, not medical, legal or security advice. For anything acute, get a doctor — the coast has good clinics and decompression chambers. Before you travel, check your own government’s current advice, and once here, follow local beach closures and dive-centre briefings: they know about today’s conditions, and this page cannot.
Last reviewed 25 July 2026. Something out of date? Tell us