InnlanternCairo, Luxor & Aswan guide
A village on Luxor's West Bank below the Theban hillsPhoto: Marc Ryckaert (MJJR), CC BY 3.0

How we choose and review hotels

The short version: public data from thousands of guests, the map, the hotel's own policies and official sources, written up in our own words and dated.

Updated 11 Oct 2026

Which hotels are in the guide

We start from every place to stay that is bookable in Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel, and keep a short list per city that covers:

  • Every budget, from guest houses at about €20–40 a night for two to the historic palace hotels.
  • Every useful area: the East Bank centre, the Corniche, Karnak, the islands and the West Bank in Luxor; the Corniche, Elephantine Island, Isis Island and Abu Simbel in Aswan.
  • Consistently high guest scores from many reviews. A 9.5 from 20 reviews says less than a 9.0 from 3,000. Most places in the guide score 8.6 or more on Booking.com with several hundred reviews or more.

A place with no score yet can be included when it fills a gap (for example, rooms for families of four), and we say clearly that it has no score.

What we look at

  • Overall score and number of reviews on Booking.com, and the Google Maps score when there is one.
  • Sub-scores (cleanliness, comfort, location, staff, value, Wi-Fi). They show weak points that an overall 9.0 hides: a low value-for-money score at a luxury hotel, or a lower facilities score at a simple guest house.
  • Location: the hotel's map position and the straight-line distance to the main sites, the station and the airport, plus what stands in between (the Nile, a ferry, a hotel boat).
  • Published policies: check-in and check-out times, minimum age, from what age children pay as adults, pets, payment.
  • Price level for the same dates (two adults, three nights in mid-January) so places can be compared fairly.

How we write

  • In our own words. We do not copy hotel or Booking.com descriptions, and we do not quote guest reviews.
  • No invented experiences. We do not say we stayed somewhere, and we never invent guests or testimonials.
  • Pros and cons. Every hotel page has a "good to know" section with the downsides that the data shows.
  • Dated facts. Each page says when its data was checked. Scores, prices and policies change; Booking.com always shows the current ones.

Money and independence

Innlantern earns commissions through affiliate links and sells clearly labelled "Featured" places on city pages (details). Neither changes the text, the scores or the pros and cons of a hotel page. A hotel cannot pay to be included, to remove a downside or to get a better description.

Corrections

If you find a mistake, or you run one of these hotels and a fact has changed, write to [email protected]. We check it against a public source and update the page and its date.