It’s a 10-minute drive from Sharm el Sheikh’s gleaming new airport to the beach. Add five hours’ flying time, then a few minutes at hotel check-in and you’re there - swimsuit on, beach towel draped over lounger, ordering your first drink.

The allure of Egypt’s Red Sea resorts lies in guaranteed sunshine - the last serious rainfall was seven years ago. They also offer high-quality hotels, good food and friendly service. They’re relatively, cheap, too: a week at a five-star hotel starts at less than £500pp, including flights. It’s twice that in Dubai.

You can fly and flop without feeling guilty - no cars to hire, no quaint villages to discover, just sun, sea and hundreds of miles of barren, beautiful desert. Once you’ve recharged your batteries, take a day trip to Mount Sinai to visit St Catherine’s monastery, home to 8,000 years of history. And you could get up at 4am and flyto Cairo for the day - but do youreally want to?

One of Egypt’s greatest attractions is the Red Sea itself, the clear blue water teeming with coral gardens just yards from the shore. Stroll to the beach, grab a snorkel and you’re swimming with parrotfish, lionfish, rays and reef sharks. There - sight-seeing done, time for a drink.

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The most stressful part of holidaying here is choosing where to stay. The western coast of the Red Sea, where you’ll find the busy resort of Hurghada and the smaller centres of Port Ghalib and Marsa Alam, has beautiful beaches and spectacular diving, but is lashed by constant winds in winter - okay for kitesurfing, less for sunbathing.

That leaves the Sinai coast. At the northern end is Taba Heights, a new, purpose-built resort. It has excellent hotels, a golf course and a beautiful location, but feels a bit soulless. Further south is Nuweiba, an ugly port town, and Dahab, which is a big hit with back-packers but has just one good hotel, Le Meridien.

Which is why you should head straight for Sharm el Sheikh, but not necessarily Na’ama Bay, the long crescent of sandy beach lined with hotels, restaurants, shops, bars and nightclubs. It’s a good option for a night out, but one of the classy resort hotels dotted along the coastline might be more suitable. Most run free shuttle buses into Na’ama Bay.

Sharm el Sheikh: the smart guide

Where to stay: if money’s no object, book a room at the Four Seasons (00 20-69 360 3555, www.fourseasons.com ; doubles from £211, B&B) - it knocks spots off the equally expensive Ritz-Carlton. Then there’s the Hyatt Regency (69 360 1234, www.hyatt.com ; doubles from £155, B&B), which has a series of pools cascading down a hillside, good food, great rooms and a superb house reef. Its club rooms come with private beach, pool butler, free soft drinks, cocktails and early-evening canapés.

Most hotels in Sharm take their architectural cues from the Mediterranean. The new Grand Rotana (69 360 2700, www.rotana.com ; doubles from £149, B&B) has bucked the trend with a contemporary Arab look - not unlike a resort hotel in Dubai. It’s quiet, hugging a long, pristine beach, so is ideal for youngish couples.

For families, there are several attractive options, including the Renaissance (69 366 4694, www.marriott.com ; doubles from £117, B&B), which offers excellent connecting suites (two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen/lounge) and the Hilton Sharks Bay (69 360 3333, www.hiltonworldresorts.com ; doubles from £132), an all-inclusive that caters to the mainstream market, complete with noisy poolside activities.

Getting there: fly from Gatwick to Sharm el Sheikh with EasyJet (www.easyjet.com ); from £150. There are charter flights from more than a dozen UK airports: Charter Flight Centre (www.charterflights.co.uk ) has fares from about £300; or try Avro (0871 423 8550, www.avro.co.uk ). The airport had a complete overhaul in May 2007.

The best packages: with Longwood Holidays (020 8418 2525, www.longwoodholidays.co.uk ), a week’s B&B in November, including flights, starts at £914pp for the Four Seasons, £544pp for the Hyatt Regency (add £39pp per night for a club room) and £584pp for the Grand Rotana. The Renaissance starts at £504pp (add £36 per family per night for a suite), the Hilton Fayrouz at £644pp and the Hilton Sharks Bay at £600pp, all-inclusive. Or try Thomas Cook (0870 750 5711, www.thomascook.com ) or Thomson (0871 231 4691, www.thomson.co.uk ).

Where to go for cocktails: Egyptian barmen don’t lead the world in mixology so choose a bar for its views, not the drinks menu. The panoramic Sky Bar at the Grand Rotana is great for sundowners before dinner at the hotel’s excellent Asian fusion restaurant, Silk Road (about £50 for two, without drinks).

Drinking in hotel bars can be pricey because of high taxes on imported spirits. The Ritz-Carlton is one of the worst offenders, charging £7.50 for cocktails and - incredibly - the same for a bottle of Beck’s. Many guests take their own duty-free spirits and mix drinks in their rooms.

In Na’ama Bay, head first to the Lido hotel, at the southern tip of the bay (follow the blue neon sign). Its decked first-floor bar, on the seafront, has squashy sofas and views across the water to the neon lights of Na’ama Bay - it looks better from a distance. The cocktails (£6) are nothing special, so order something simple.

For dinner, head to Abou El Sid, the most authentic Egyptian restaurant in Na’ama Bay, in spite of its unpromising location above the Hard Rock Café. Behind heavy wooden doors, it has an ornate interior and an atmospheric roof terrace where you can eat stuffed pigeon, okra and veal tagine, and fettah (veal in yoghurt and tomato sauce). Main courses cost about £5.

Later, head to the main drag, where the rooftop bar of the Camel hotel has great views, a DJ and a hip young crowd sprawled out on cushions. Still up for it? Across the road is Little Buddha (an outpost of Paris’s Buddha Bar), which serves cocktails and sushi on the ground floor and mutates into a club until 4am (£12 after 11pm). When to go: any time between October and May, but bear in mind that the sea gets chilly between December and March.

Mark Hodson travelled as a guest of Longwood Holidays

MORE MIDDLE EASTERN HOT SPOTS
Djerba, Tunisia:one of the few Mediterranean islands that enjoys balmy winters is the original land of the Lotus Eaters. It’s a deliciously laid-back little place of pavement cafes and sleepy bazaars, encircled by soft, sandy beaches. The place to stay is the newly refurbished Radisson SAS, where a week costs £795pp, B&B, with Wigmore Holidays (020 7836 4999, www.aspectsoftunisia.co.uk ).

Luxor, Egypt:it may be bereft of beaches, but Luxor has elegant hotels where you can lounge poolside under a cloudless sky, reading Agatha Christie and drinking mint tea. Sail down the Nile on a felucca, clop around town in a calash and arrange a tour of temples and tombs. A November week at the Maritim Jolie Ville Luxor Island starts at £445pp, B&B, with Thomas Cook (0845 077 2288, www.thomascook.com ).

Ras al-Khaimah, UAE:fly further south and the warm seas of the United Arab Emirates come into play. With Dubai too pricey - and, you might argue, too tacky and congested - it’s worth venturing out to a less familiar destination such as Ras al-Khaimah, which borders Oman. Destinology (0800 072 2227, www.destinology.co.uk ) has five nights at the Hilton from £649pp, B&B, in November.

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