Hurghada or Marsa Alam — which stretch of the Red Sea

Both are on the Red Sea, both have good reef, and they are 220 kilometres apart. The difference is not really the water — it is how much else there is, how far the day trips are, and how quiet you want the evening to be. Marsa Alam has better reef and almost nothing else; Hurghada has everything else and a busier sea.

The short answer

• Hurghada if you want excursions, a town to walk around, a wide choice of hotels at every price, and short drives to everything. It is also the practical base for day trips to Luxor and Cairo.
• Marsa Alam if the reef is the reason you are coming. Better coral, fewer boats, turtles and dugongs at Abu Dabbab, and evenings that consist of your hotel and the stars.
• Neither, if diving is genuinely the point and you can take a liveaboard instead. That is a different holiday and a better one for the same money.

The reef and shallows off Hurghada

Getting there

Both have international airports. Hurghada (HRG) takes far more flights, from more airports, more often, and it is usually cheaper to reach. Marsa Alam (RMF) is smaller with a thinner schedule, so the flight is often the deciding factor before anything else is considered.

If you fly into Hurghada and stay in Marsa Alam, that is a transfer of roughly three hours down the coast road. Do it if the hotel is worth it; do not do it unplanned at the end of a night flight.

The water

Marsa Alam wins on reef, and it is not close. It is further south, less built, and has had far fewer boat-days on it. Abu Dabbab is the headline: green turtles grazing seagrass in shallow water you can snorkel from the beach, and a resident dugong that is genuinely sometimes there and genuinely sometimes not. Anyone selling you a guaranteed dugong is selling you a disappointment.

Seagrass shallows at Abu Dabbab, south of Marsa Alam

Hurghada's reef is good and heavily used. The island days — Giftun, Orange Bay, Mahmya — are busy, managed and genuinely enjoyable if you accept them as a beach day with snorkelling attached rather than as a wilderness. The house reefs along the hotel strip are better than their reputation and are where most first dives happen.

Spinner dolphins in open water off the Red Sea coast

For wild dolphins, both work: Dolphin House off Hurghada and Samadai off Marsa Alam. Both are wild animals in their own habitat, both are zoned and time-limited for exactly that reason, and neither is a guarantee.