Suhad Elkhodary
17 December 2025
On a famous rock that would later bear her name, actress Leila Mourad sat and sang “El-Maya we’l Hawa” in the film Shati el-Gharam (The Beach of Love). She sang of the sea that brought her “solace” and of the people “who come and go,” in an era when both the rich and the poor shared the shoreline. In the film, Mourad—playing the daughter of a telegraph operator, meets a wealthy young man. They are brought together by the sea, which at the time was a refuge open to everyone.
It seems that Egypt’s beaches are no longer as accessible as they once were for the public, according to Ahmed Hussein, a pseudonym, who lives in Matrouh Governorate. Ahmed says that, unlike in the past, he and his family can no longer access beaches such as Ras El Hekma or others along the north coast starting from Marina El Alamein.
Spread of tourist resorts all along Egypt’s the northwest coast
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Thirty-eight-year-old Ahmed objects to the new layout of public parks in Matrouh؛ residents of Matrouh now have no option but to walk along the tourist promenade or search for distant places,paths.All this is associated with financial and mental stress . In the past, he says, people could use all coastal areas from Marina onwards.
For Ahmed the most beautiful thing about Matrouh was that it was a place where you could interact with nature: “I’d go down to the beach, breathe in the sea air and lie in the sun.”
But he says that beauty began to disappear when buildings started going up: “What we have now is investment-driven… If you want to enjoy God-given nature, you’ve got to be able to afford it.”
The number of beach resorts in Egypt has increased by 478 resorts in the last six years (2019-2024). At the same time, 88 percent of the country’s beaches are now privately owned, compared to 14 percent in 2013, according to data analysis by Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).
By 2024, the number of beach tourist resorts in Egypt had reached 562, and there were 500 private beaches, according to CAPMAS.
According to data compiled by ARIJ on 106 planned tourist resorts along the Matrouh Governorate coastline, most of them located between Al-Alamein and Marsa Matrouh, construction is already underway on the majority of these projects. Together, they cover an estimated 131,000 dunams.
Data analysis shows that 79 of these resorts face the sea, making a total beachfront of around 72 kilometers.
We also found that Gulf-based business partnerships, both individuals and institutions, have acquired roughly 32 kilometers of beachfront along Egypt’s northwest coast. Their planned tourist resort projects cover about 66,000 dunams, accounting for 51 percent of the total area of the tourist resorts included in our analysis.That does not include the Ras El Hekma project, which the Egyptian government unveiled in February 2024, for which the Abu Dhabi Development Holding Company has acquired the development rights. The Ras El Hekma project will have a 44 kilometer long seafront.
We found that sovereign wealth funds and government bodies in the Gulf states are behind the development of many of the waterfront tourist resorts. These include Abu Dhabi Development Holding Company (ADQ), Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), the government-owned Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the Qatar Investment Authority, represented through Qatari Diar, and the Saudi Ministry of Finance. These projects have taken over 43 percent of the total land area and more than half the total length of the coastline of all the projects implemented through Gulf-based partnerships or capital.
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This is aside from the input from private companies in the Gulf states, or partnerships with businessmen who were, or still are, active in government agencies there. These include Majid Al Nuaimi, chairman of the Emiri Court in the Emirate of Ajman and member of the Ajman Executive Council; and Mohamed Al Hajeri, executive director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority – the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government.
The list of real estate developers also includes Mohammed Alabbar, former advisor to the ruler of Dubai, who was the founding director general of the Dubai government’s Department of Economic Development. Alabbar currently chairs the board of directors of Emaar Misr, which is partly owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD). The company has invested $18 billion USD in the Marassi and Soul Luxury Beach projects on the north-west coast, $15 billion USD in the Marassi project alone.
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The environmental requirements for licensing tourist resorts stipulate that not to build on the beach area (defined as 200 meter inland from the shoreline, and with ministerial approval) and to adhere to conditions governing construction in coastal areas.
However, the Supreme Committee for Beach Licensing can consider the approval of all licences within the restricted area, which includes the entire Egyptian coastline.
Who actually owns land along the northern coastline is sometimes unclear. A case in point is the area on which Emaar Misr, partly owned by ICD, built the Marassi project. In 2006, Emaar Misr won a public auction for a plot of land measuring approximately 6,200 dunams, then belonging to the Egyptian government-owned company EGOTH.
Emaar Misr acquired the land for Egyptian pounds (EGP) 160.5 per square meter (equivalent to $27.9 USD at the time), paying a total of approximately EGP 1.04 billion ($174.6 million USD). EGOTH stated that it had been allocated the land by the Ministry of Tourism. In 2012, Emaar Misr obtained a licence to build the first phase of the Marassi project. But some months later, the investment department in Matrouh Governorate said that it had found evidence that it had jurisdiction over the land and that EGOTH was not entitled to sell it without prior consultation. The land registry refused to register the plot of land.
Licences for the second phase of the project were suspended pending resolution of the dispute by a special committee. Emaar, subsequently, completed construction of the project and put the units up for sale. Emaar Misr’s financial report for 2020 shows that the land on which Marassi was built is now registered in the company’s name.
Hisham Talaat Moustafa
Nationality: Egyptian
Company: CEO Talaat Moustafa Group.
Tourism project: SouthMED – Kilo 165 on Alexandria/Marsa Matrouh road.
State position: Member of a government advisory committee for tourism development
Other positions: Former member of the Shura Council.
Project area: 23,000 dunams
Project value: $21 billion
Length of seafront: 5,500 m
Project start: 2024
Project delivery: 2029
Mohammed Alabbar
Nationality: Emirati
Company: Founder of Emaar Misr
Tourism project: Marassi and Soul Luxury projects
State position: Marassi and Soul Luxury projects
Location of projects:
Marassi project at Kilo 129 Alexandria Road/Marsa Matrouh – Sidi Abdel Rahman.
Sol Luxury project at Kilo 160 on the same road.
Area: 2,127.6 feddans / 8,935.92 dunams
Value: $18 billion – $15 billion for Marassi alone
Maritime frontage: 8,000 m
Project start year:
Marasi: 2008
Sol Luxury: Later
Delivery year:
Marasi: 2030
Sol Luxury: 2026
Tawhid Abdullah
Nationality: Emirati
Company: Partner in Serac Real Estate Development
Tourism project: Shamasi resort and Alura resorts
State position: Representative of the gold and jewellery sector in Dubai government committees
Location of Shamasi: Kilo 134 on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh road, Sidi Abdel Rahman.
Location of Alora: Kilo 134 on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh road, Sidi Abdel Rahman.
Total area of both projects: 256 feddans (1,113 dunams)
Project value: Investment cost of Shamasi project not made public; investments in Alura project approx. six billion Egyptian pounds
Length of waterfront: 1,000 m
Yassin Mansour
Nationality: Egyptian
Company: Founder and Chairman of Palm Hills
Tourism project: Developed seven projects on the north coast: Hacienda Waters, Hacienda Sidi Heneish, Hacienda West, Hacienda Bay, Palm Hills El Alamein, Hacienda White, and Hacienda Blue
State position: Member of the Urban Development and Real Estate Export Committee
Project area: 6,785.1 dunams
Project value: Not made public, except for Hacienda Sidi Heneish, valued at 120 billion Egyptian pounds
Waterfront: 3,360 m².
Waterfront area of projects excluding the 900 m² Hacienda White (completed in 2021) is 2,460 m²
Project start: The first project (Hacienda Bay) began in 2007
Delivery year: 2021, with the rest of the projects to be completed by 2028
Ahmed Hussein Sabbour
Nationality: Egyptian
Company: Chairman and managing director of Al Ahly Sabbour Real Estate Development; founder and chairman of Landmark Sabbour Development
Project: Four tourist resorts on the north coast: Samar Ras El-Hekma, Gaia, Amwaj, and Zoya
State position: Member of the Senate and secretary of the Housing, Transport and Local Administration Committee.
Share: Ahmed owns the 60 percent stake in Al Ahly Sabbour that he inherited from his father, Hussein Sabbour, and is a co-owner of Landmark Sabbour with businessman Amr Sultan
Total area of projects: 1,638 feddans/6,879.6 dunams
Value: EGP 120.6 billion, of which EGP 100 billion for Samar Ras El-Hekma project
Waterfront: 3,710 m², 1,000 m² of which is Samar Ras El-Hekma project
Deliver year: Samar project in 2028
Ahmed Shalabi
Nationality: Egyptian
Company: CEO Tatweer Misr
State position: Deputy chairman of Real Estate Export Council; member of Urban Development and Real Estate Export Committee, affiliated with the Prime Minister’s Office; former technical advisor to the Minister of Housing
Tourism project: Developer of D Bay and Fouka Bay
Location of D Bay: At kilo 165 on the Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh road (El Dabaa area)
Fouka Bay location: At km 211 km on the Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh road (Ras El-Hekma Bay).
Total area of projects: 410 feddans/1,722 dunams
Total value of projects: 11 billion Egyptian pounds, of which 7 billion are for D Bay
Length of seafront: 1,600 m
Start year of Fouka Bay: 2019
Expected delivery year of D Bay 2027
Hisham Shukri
Nationality: Egyptian
Company: Owner of Roya Company
Tourism project: Telal Soul.
State position: Head of Real Estate Export Council and Real Estate Investment Division of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce; also a member of the board of directors of the Real Estate Development Chamber
Location of Telal Soul project: kilo 140 on Alexandria/Matrouh Road, Alamein center.
Project area: 339 feddans/1423.8 dunams
Project value: N/A
Length of maritime frontage: 1500 m
Start year of project: 2024
Year of delivery: 2027
Mahmoud El-Gamal
Nationality: Egyptian
Company: Partner and CEO of New Giza Company in partnership with: Egyptian businessman Salah Diab (30 percent each), Libyan Investment Fund (30 percent) and Qatari Diar Group (40 percent).
Tourism project: Seashell Playa.
State position: Current member of the Urban Development and Real Estate Development Committee, and son-in-law of former President Hosni Mubarak
Location of Seashell Playa: kilo 134 Alexandria-Matrouh Road
Project area: 700 feddans/2,940 dunams
Project value: EGP 15 billion
Sea frontage: 1,600 meters long
Project start year: 2015
Delivery Year: (N/A)
Hossam Muharram, former advisor to the Minister of Environment, says that the system of closing beaches to locals to build tourist resorts, begun in the 1970s, is unconstitutional, and could be overturned if a case was brought before the Constitutional Court.
Muharram argues that all citizens have a right of access to public beaches. He has no problem with having restaurants and parks as long as these are subject to environmental controls and the beach itself is not off limits to the public and only accessible to those in the tourist resorts, where the cost of services is so exorbitant that 60 to 70 percent of people are unable to afford them.
Lawyer and human rights activist Entisar Elsaeed, chair of the board of trustees of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law, says that public beaches are a right guaranteed to people under the constitution: “It’s not reasonable that a country with thousands of kilometers of coastline should have most of it closed off with gates and signs saying ‘No entry except for guests.’ as if the sea itself has become private property.”
She thinks legal action could be taken if it was proven that restricting or leasing of public beaches was taking place, or the coastal landscape was being altered, in breach of the constitution or environmental laws.
Elsaeed stresses that natural resources (including beaches and coastlines) are owned by the people, and that the state is responsible for protecting them and not neglecting them.
According to Elsaeed, articles 32 and 45 of the 2014 Constitution and Environmental Law No. 4 of 1994 stipulate that conditions for environmental protection must be met and that environmental approval must be obtained before any development is carried out, especially in highly environmentally sensitive coastal areas. “No party, not even the state, has the right to give up beaches without transparent control mechanisms and without some genuine benefit to the public,” she says.
The former head of the city council in Dabaa, which comes under the Matrouh Governorate, Major General Hussein Abu Taleb, made no secret of the fact that the authorities knew that beaches in tourist projects on the north coast could only be used by guests staying there. After all, local government departments in Matrouh had demanded that tourist resorts pay fees for the right to use the beaches and the sea.
Abu Taleb said on television that these projects were granted licences to build facilities on land facing the sea, not to completely take over beaches, which were public property. And so they would have to pay for this. He insisted that there was nothing in the contracts between the governorate – the governing authority – and the tourist resorts built on the land concerned suggesting that the beach and the sea belonged to those projects.
Abu Taleb said: “Tourist resorts have a special status and are closed areas, and the owners are the ones who use the sand and the sea.”He added: “There is no way anyone can get into a resort, especially on the north coast. No one can get in.”
Development projects with UAE investment account for half of all the projects funded by Gulf investment or Gulf partnerships, according to data compiled on 106 tourism projects on Egypt’s north-west coast.
Tourist resorts linked to UAE investments also take up around 70 percent of the beach frontage and two-thirds of the total area of those projects developed with Gulf investment or in partnership with Gulf countries.
Emirati interest became especially clear when plans for Ras El-Hekma City on the north-west coast were announced. The city’s key facilities include an industrial zone, an international airport and logistic service centers. With a surface area of approximately 170 million square meters, a waterfront extending 44 kiloMeters, and reaching back 100 Meters from the shoreline, the city takes up most of the Ras El-Hekma peninsula.
UAE media celebrated the Ras El-Hekma City project, with the Emirates News Agency calling it the “crown jewel” of UAE investments abroad. It is located west of Alexandria between Marsa Matrouh and New Alamein City on land transferred to the New Urban Communities Authority. The project is expected to attract investments of $150 billion, according to the Egyptian government.
Abu Dhabi Development Holding Company (ADQ) paid US$24 billion directly for the rights to develop Ras El-Hekma, while the Egyptian government retains a 35 percent stake in the project. ADQ is also to give $11 billion for investment in major projects in Egypt.
Described as the largest economic, real estate and tourism deal in Egypt’s modern history, the project includes residential neighbourhoods, international hotels and resorts, entertainment venues as well as an economic free zone, logistics centers, and a large marina and business centers to attract global companies. ADQ is also developing an international airport there, the profits from which will go to Egypt.
Modon Holdings, selected to actually develop Ras El-Hekma City, launched the first phase with 7,700 housing units, with sales projected to reach $6.2 billion (EGP 300 billion) by the end of 2025. Prices start at EGP 15.9 million ($329,000) for a one-bedroom flat.
ADQ has links with one of Egypt’s largest real estate companies, the Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG). In 2024, ADQ and the ADNEC Group acquired 40.5 percent of ICON – TMG’s hospitality arm – in which the two companies plan to invest using a special purpose vehicle. TMG has announced an agreement with ADQ to collaborate on the development of Ras El-Hekma.
Hisham Talaat Moustafa is CEO and managing director of TMG. In 2010, he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim, but received a presidential pardon in 2017, after which he resumed his business activities. Hisham Talaat Moustafa now undertakes strategic projects in cooperation with the Egyptian government and Gulf investment funds, like ADQ. His group owns major real estate and tourism projects in Egypt, such as Madinaty and Al Rehab, as well as the SouthMED project on the north coast. He is currently a member of the advisory committee on developing Egyptian tourism, which the prime minister set up.
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Source: Database put together for this investigation
Data shows that projects run by companies in which the government has a share account for around a third of the total area set aside for tourist resorts – either completed or under development. These projects occupy about 13 kilometers of beachfront.
The New Urban Communities Authority has the major share in New Alamein City – launched in 2018 – through the City Edge project portfolio, owned by the Egyptian government. The Housing and Development Bank is the next biggest investor in New Alamein City, where unit prices start at EGP 16.8 million.
The city, which is still under construction on a site of around 200,000 dunams, includes numerous tourist and entertainment facilities, educational institutions, and a 14-kilometer-long promenade on the Mediterranean coast. The government is also involved in four other projects with the private sector, through Hyde Park Real Estate Development and the National Bank of Egypt – both government owned, in addition to projects carried out through the Saudi Egyptian Developers (SED), according to the database covering 106 tourism projects on the north coast.
In 2020, a presidential decree transferred ownership of parts of the north-west coast to the New Urban Communities Authority, with the aim of establishing new communities there. An area of approximately 707,200 feddans was allocated to the authority.
The largest project in which the government is involved in, in partnership with businessman Hisham Talaat Moustafa, is SouthMED Village, which was unveiled in 2024. The project is valued at around $21 billion. It will take up 23 million square meters and will include a large international marina for yachts and cruise ships.
The compensation offered to the residents of the village of Jemima, where the project will be built, was between three and seven thousand Egyptian pounds per square meter ($62-$145 USD). At the same time, Talaat Moustafa Holding Group announced sales of EGP 200 billion in just six days. The project is expected ultimately to bring in a total of EGP 1.6 trillion ($33.15 billion USD).
An environmental impact study is a basic requirement for obtaining a licence to build tourist resorts and schemes in Egypt. The preparation of this assessment is governed by the executive regulations of Environmental Law No. 4 of 1994, as amended by Law No. 9 of 2009, and is carried out under the supervision of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA).
Tourist resorts are classified either (b) or (c) according to several criteria, most importantly the size and geographical location of the project. Small or medium-sized resorts are in category (b), while large resorts or those located in environmentally sensitive areas, such as coastlines or nature reserves, are classified as (c). These are projects with the greatest environmental impact and which, therefore, require strict conditions and in-depth reviews, according to EEAA guidelines covering the principles and procedures for environmental impact assessments. In these types of schemes, “public consultation” with local people is required to involve them, alongside the relevant authorities, at both the planning and implementation stage.
Sahar Mehanna, former head of the Fisheries Division at the National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, makes clear that assessments must stipulate that the project does no damage or cause erosion to the site, and that works have no impact on marine life and the ecosystem. She says that projects must also comply with environmental law, which prohibits pollution – managing waste without disposing of it in waterways and carrying out soil and water analysis.
Sahar adds that all projects must undergo an environmental impact assessment, and no work should begin until the study confirms that the project will not harm aquatic life or marine ecosystems. She notes that the assessment must also be formally approved by a government institution.
She also explained that building work must not damage nature in the area or alter the environment – by land reclamation or extension. And it must not cause beach erosion or affect marine life and the local ecosystem.
The amendments made in 2009 to the law governing environmental impact assessment appear to be particularly noteworthy, since they transferred responsibility for carrying out such studies from the relevant government agency to the owner of the scheme. The law previously stated that “the competent administrative or licensing authority shall assess the environmental impact of the facility.” But it now requires “every natural or legal person, public or private, to submit an environmental impact assessment study for the facility.” The role of the administrative body is now to evaluate the facility owner’s submission, in accordance with Articles 19 and 20 of the amendments to Environment Law No. 9 of 2009. This is consistent with the conclusion of a study by the Human and the City for Social Research in Egypt (2025).
Sahar Mehanna asserts that investors have been guilty of violations, such as putting up scaffolding that erodes the soil, or dumping waste in the sea. “People can put up scaffolding in the blink of an eye, which then becomes a fait accompli,” she says.
The building of tourist resorts and recreational areas has emerged as one of the threats to Egypt’s north-west Mediterranean coastline. Coastal erosion was observed between 1990 and 2020, according to a study by researchers from Alexandria University and the National Water Research center in Egypt, which was published in 2003 in the journal Regional Studies in Marine Science.
This study, focusing on the area between Dabaa and Ras El-Hekma, found that the period between 2010 and 2020, saw the highest rate of beach erosion, with a loss of 1.12 meters per year.
An Egyptian study published in Beni Suef University’s Journal of the Faculty of Arts also showed that, between 2016 and 2023, human intervention significantly affected the “morphology” of the northern coastline between El Alamein city and Sidi Abdel Rahman.
This intervention was tied to the construction and development of tourist resorts. Some projects involved creating new beaches and reinforcing them structurally, building yacht marinas and coastal lakes and connecting them to the sea through canals, and even constructing buildings directly on the shoreline. All this caused a net beach erosion of around 662.6 meters during the eight years from 2016-2023 – the highest rate of erosion recorded in the period covered by the study – 1996-2023.
Ezz El-Din Gomaa, a forty-year-old from Matrouh who has worked as a fisherman and diver for 26 years, says that the expansion of tourism projects has had a profound impact on the marine environment, through wastewater runoff into the sea, oil and plastic waste and rubbish dumped on beaches.
He also explains that soil erosion caused by construction linked to tourism has led to layers of lime building up in the sea. This has created an environment unsuitable for species of fish like sea bass and grouper, which have, thereby, become scarce.
Gomaa pointed out that fishermen have been denied access to about 80 percent of Matrouh’s beaches, because of the new tourist resorts in areas like Ras El-Hekma, Jemima, Sidi Abd al-Rahman, Sidi Heneish and Bagoush. This has caused problems for fishermen, since some resort owners alert the security forces when fishing boats come in close, leading to confiscation of equipment and boats. Gomaa has experienced this personally more than once.
Ahmed Hussein (not his real name) from Matrouh says: “We can’t do normal things anymore, like fishing, swimming, or safaris. And that’s on top of the astronomical prices they charge for services, compared to the rest of the country.” He adds: “For a year and a half, I haven’t been able to take my family to the seaside.”
The “Leila Mourad” rock is still there. But you can no longer go there for free, as anyone who wants to climb onto it must first pay to go on the beach.
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Mohamed Saeed, an amateur angler from Alexandria, can no longer reach large parts of Egypt’s north coast because of the expansion of tourism projects there.
Now aged 47, Saeed has noticed a decline in both the quantity and size of fish in the last few years, as the investment in tourism has grown. “There used to be so much in the sea… loads of fish and really big ones.” he says. “But these new developments have scared them away. And on top of that there’s overfishing, because there’s no supervision.”
Saeed explains: “I used to catch five or six kilos at a time, or twice that, back in 2010. But now the catch is usually no more than a kilo.” He points out the disappearance of popular species of fish like khazar and the drop in numbers of red mullet in the last ten years.
Public beaches in Egypt have shrunk considerably as tourism projects have expanded. Since 2010, the authorities in Alexandria have adopted a policy of categorising public beaches as “premium, tourist or free,” and of dividing one beach into several, to facilitate its commercial exploitation. This has led to a drop in the number of public beaches compared to private beaches, with only 20 free beaches left.
Eleven premium and eleven tourist beaches have also been put up for public auction. And three further classifications have now been added: private, public, and service upon request, according to a study by the Human and the City for Social Research in Egypt.
This report found that the seafront promenade in areas such as Sidi Bishr, Cleopatra, Sporting and Camp Chezar had been turned into cafeterias and restaurants because of a lack of supervision. Haphazard construction also took place right along the corniche between 2011 and 2019, with parts of it being converted into garages for cafes and restaurants between 2019 and 2024. In 2017, the public beach at Shatby had also been taken over to build a private garage.
The case of Alexandria shows clearly how the spread of tourism projects causes a reduction in beaches available to the general public. The number of private beaches in the governorate has increased significantly in ten years. In 2013 there were no private beaches at all, but by 2024 there were 65, and the number of beach resorts had grown to 43, according to data from Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics.
Data collected by ARIJ shows that 78 tenders for the leasing or exploitation of beaches in Alexandria were put out between 2015 and 2024.
Our data also shows that, in 2021, the Contracts Department of the General Administration of Financial Affairs put out tenders for the exploitation of six public beaches in Alexandria or hiring of water sports equipment there.
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In 2016, the Central Administration for Tourism and Resorts in Alexandria awarded a leasing contract for The Beau Rivage Tourist Beach to the Dubai Tourism Investment Company for approximately EGP 15 million ($1.7 million). It also awarded a leasing contract for Stanley Tourist Beach to the Kraash Tourism Development Company for around EGP 4 million ($450,000). Both contracts allowed for a ten percent annual increase for the next three years. The following year, the Central Administration for Tourism and Resorts in Alexandria announced an increase in beach rental rates, which were 50 percent higher on some beaches than rates for the same beaches in 2024, and 100 percent higher in some cases.
Satellite images show how, between 2013 and 2025, tourism projects have both taken over public beaches and reclaimed areas of sea. For example, the Four Seasons San Stefano Hotel now occupies the beach in front of the San Stefano Grand Plaza Tower, where a hotel owned by the Talaat Moustafa Group stands. Official statistics show that there were no private beaches in the governorate until 2013.
New tourist infrastructure has not just encroached on public beaches, but has also extended into the sea on sandbars, as is the case with the suites and beach villas belonging to the Four Seasons San Stefano Hotel.
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The Glim sandbar, which was built to protect the beach from erosion, has also been turned from a coastal promenade used by everyone into restaurants and café area. The transformation of the area into a tourist project known as Glim Bay has outraged residents of Alexandria, as it was previously a “place of respite for the poor.” Not all of the buildings put up were of wood, as stipulated in the guidelines for construction in this restricted area. And some of them are more than one story.
A sandbar near the Teachers’ Club beach has been turned into a restaurant and café area, while part of the sea has been filled in to allow expansion of the Golden Jewel Halls facilities, which overlook the Mediterranean. The hotel has a private beach, a water park, outdoor swimming pools and restaurants.
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In Montazah, areas of trees on a promontory were removed to make way for parts of the Montazah Bay Beach in 2023. A ticket to go to the beach costs EGP 350 per person, including admission to the gardens. Private beach services have also taken over large sections of the old beach in front of the Rixos Montazah Hotel, opened in 2025. Satellite images show that part of the gardens was removed to make way for the Helnan Maamoura Hotel, built in 2022, near the distinctive Maamoura beach. A hotel swimming pool replaced the trees, which were clearly visible in satellite images from 2013.
The gardens of the Montazah Palace underwent substantial changes as part of development work costing around EGP five billion. This included construction of four artificial lakes over an area of 31,000 square meters, the Paradise tourist village, and three swimming pools covering 810 square meters. The whole project was designed to overlook the sea on three sides, with a total area of approximately 24,000 square meters.
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Saeed resents the fact that those in charge of tourist sites control access to the beaches, and that café owners can bar fishermen from the corniche except in limited areas, particularly between Saba Pasha and Sidi Gaber, unless they buy a ticket or purchase a membership.
Said says, “We can’t get to San Stefano, Tolip or Mahrousa anymore because of the hotels and resorts they’ve put up there.” Entrance fees to tourist sites can be up to EGP 100, he says. “The corniche should go back to the way it was, when it belonged to all Egyptians.”
