Planning Your Sharm El Sheikh Trip
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Travel advisory: North Sinai is a do-not-travel zone, and the South Sinai interior beyond the St Catherine-Nuweiba-El Tor road carries an “all but essential” warning. Sharm el-Sheikh and the Red Sea resort strip are explicitly excepted from both and are treated as normal, low-risk tourism, provided you fly in rather than drive across the peninsula. Check your own government’s current advisory before booking.
This is the practical, first-timer side of visiting Sharm el-Sheikh: what the entry permit actually requires, how many days to plan for, when to go, and roughly what it costs. For the full rundown of sights and diving, see our Sharm el-Sheikh travel guide instead; this page is about getting the logistics right before you land.
The free Sinai entry permit, not a visa
The single most useful fact for planning: if you fly directly into Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport and stay under 15 days within the Sharm/Dahab/Nuweiba/Taba resort strip, you receive a free entry-permission stamp on arrival, no visa needed. This changes the moment you leave the strip, for St Catherine, Cairo, Luxor or anywhere along the Nile, or if you stay longer than 15 days: then you need a full Egyptian e-visa or visa-on-arrival (typically quoted around $25-30, though service-fee-inflated third-party quotes run higher, so verify the true cost before paying). Day-boat trips to Ras Mohammed and the Straits of Tiran are commonly treated by operators as staying within the permit zone since they don’t cross an interior checkpoint, but confirm this with your dive shop rather than assuming it, and don’t extend that assumption to St Catherine, which is genuinely inland and needs the full visa.
How many days to plan for
Three to five days covers a proper diving-and-beach base: enough time for a Ras Mohammed trip, a Thistlegorm run if you’re a certified diver, and a day or two doing nothing more than the pool and the house reef. Add a day for Dahab and the Blue Hole, and a separate day (organized tour only) for St Catherine’s Monastery and Mount Sinai if the inland history and the sunrise hike interest you. A week lets you add all of the above without rushing any single day. Anything shorter than three days means picking one dive site and one beach day and skipping the rest.
Getting there
Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport (SSH) is the only realistic way in for most visitors: easyJet and TUI run frequent routes from UK regional airports, British Airways flies a seasonal Gatwick route, and EgyptAir connects Sharm to Cairo, Hurghada and Luxor domestically. Overland coaches from Cairo exist but mean a long desert road journey rather than a quick hop, and flying is also what ties into the free entry permit above. Once you land, taxis are the default way to your resort; agree the fare before you get in, since meters are unreliable in practice.
Budgeting in EGP
The Egyptian pound has devalued sharply, running past E£40 to the US dollar by 2025 (verify the current rate close to your travel date, since it moves). USD, EUR and cards are all accepted at resorts, and a 10-15% service charge is often already on restaurant bills, so tipping beyond that is optional rather than expected everywhere. Bargaining is normal and expected at the Old Market, less so at fixed-price supermarkets and malls. Budget roughly $50-100 a day for a mid-range trip, more if you’re diving daily, since boat trips and equipment rental add up quickly.
When to go
Spring (March-May) and autumn (September-November) are the sweet spot: warm enough for the beach, cool enough that a day trip into the desert doesn’t feel punishing. Summer (June-August) pushes past 37°C and is genuinely tough if you’re not spending most of the day in the water. Winter (December-February) brings mild days and cooler nights, plus a wind locals call the shimal, and the sea drops to around 21-22°C, cold enough that divers want a wetsuit even on a warm-feeling day; it’s still peak season for northern Europeans escaping the cold at home. Ramadan runs roughly 18 February to 19 March 2026, during which resorts serve tourists largely as normal even though local restaurant hours shift.
For the tips that come up most for first-timers, our Sharm el-Sheikh travel tips page covers etiquette and money details in more depth, and the 2-day itinerary is a good starting template even if you’re staying longer.
One concrete tip: book your flight and your first dive trip together where you can. Operators fill up fast in the shoulder seasons, and knowing your dive schedule before you land makes it much easier to plan the rest of the week around it.