The Lotus is a fairly new hotel. It is on the Nile side of the main Khaled Ebn El Walid Street that serves most of the hotels in the southern cluster, squeezed between the Steigenberger Nile Palace on one side and the swimming pool and Sonesta St George on the other. It is owned by the government. Its main business appears to be for short-stay government purposes, such as police conferences.

It is set back from the road behind some roadside tourist shops and also set back a little more than the neighbouring hotels from the Nile. Being set back at the front gives it the advantage that road noise is not a major problem from any of the rooms and you get a chance to emerge from the building without being immediately accosted by taxi and caleche drivers. The hotel entrance from the road is inconspicuous and easy to miss or to mistake for the gate to the public swimming pool on the Sonesta side.

Being set back from the Nile means that there is a fair depth to the grounds which include a circular pool, heated in winter, with adjoining shallow pool, and several sitting areas on different levels. On the minus side, it also means that the sun rarely gets to the balconies because even after the sun has made its way to the west, all but the very centre rooms are shielded by the flanks of the neighbouring hotels and the walls of the Lotus itself.

The hotel boasts Nile views from every room. Strictly speaking, that may be true although in most rooms the view is available only from the balcony and the half of the room inside the balcony. Being so close to the neighbouring hotels, the same walls that shield the balconies from the sun also blinker the outlook, so that the view of the Nile is very constrained, especially from the rooms set back furthest from the river. From these rooms, most of the view is of the Nile Palace on one side and the Sonesta over the swimming pool on the other side. The best Nile views are from the centre rooms, and views are still quite good one or two rooms back, but beyond that the blinkering effect makes its mark, especially on the Nile Palace (higher room number) side. To be fair, the views from standard price rooms at other hotels, such as the Sonesta, Nile Palace, Iberotel and Isis are also limited, so this is not peculiar to the Lotus. At the competing hotels, the rooms with the best views come at quite a high price premium. At the Lotus you can get a better view from a standard price room, if you get the right one. If you want the best views try to get a room number ending between 04 and 08 (some of these are suites).

The hotel appears quite smart from the outside and the effect is maintained as you enter a small but impressive reception area, with polished marble, smart antique-style furnishings and a vista straight through to the Nile beyond. The gloss on the image is a little let down by the standard of finish if you look closely, by a temporary-looking ATM machine, public internet computer terminals and printed paper notices.

The antique-style furniture continues into a neighbouring lounge, which doubles as a saloon where drinks can be bought. In the centre of the reception area is an atrium which extends upwards through the five guest floors to a roof light. On each of the floors a galleried landing surrounding the atrium gives access to the guest rooms. This is a very pleasant feature, providing natural light through the building, although the atrium also tends to act as a megaphone for any noise there may be.

You get the impression that a great deal of attention went into creating an appealing public space but that the rooms themselves were designed and fitted to a budget rather than to a specification. Some of them are really rather small, even for a hotel that has not earned five stars. The rest are average in size for a four or five star hotel. Natural light is limited to a pair of glazed doors onto the balconies. The balconies themselves are quite small and have no chairs or other furniture. Most of them are in constant shade.

There is no hairdryer and there are no drink-making facilities although there does not seem to be any problem bringing your own kettle and there are none of the normal notices banning food or drink purchased outside. The bathrooms are a reasonable size and have a shortish bath tub with shower over. The fittings are basic, the sort that comes as a job lot in DIY store January sales, but functional. Basic toiletries (soap, shampoo and shower gel) are provided.

The rooms have fridge and TV. The TV shows mostly arabic-language channels. There are a couple of channels showing English language, mostly American, films and TV shows subtitled into Arabic, and Nile TV with occasional news in English but none of the normal English language news channels, such as BBC World or CNN.

The rooms appear to be well cleaned by pleasant staff who are adept at towel-architecture. However, the appearance of the rooms is a little let down by poor finishing of the building. We have seen glass that is too small for its opening, surface-mounted taps that have been fitted too far from the wall so they look less secure than they are and clumsy use of cement at the finishing stage. All minor points but unnecessary snags that really ought to have been picked up at building stage and betray a possible lack of priority to the private guest areas. The guest room furniture, too, is quite ordinary and appears older than the hotel's 2 years. The wardrobe is far too small for a two-week stay. These things are not going to spoil your holiday, but it is a shame that a hotel with so much potential has missed the mark in trivial ways. The other 4 star hotel built at about the same time, the Morris, has high quality sanitary appliances and plush finishes throughout.

The air-conditioning is not the sleekest, nor the quietest, but it is effective and remote controlled. There are no safes in the rooms, but safety deposit boxes are available at reception.

No management staff were evident, but hands-on staff including pool and reception, were very pleasant, attentive and appeared efficient; their command of English perfectly adequate for day-to-day hotel needs. The waiting staff were mixed. We soon got to know who would respond.

Breakfast is a little different to the norm. At most hotels catering for tourists, breakfast is self-service with a sample from most breakfast cultures - continental, British, Egyptian and sometimes Japanese. At the Lotus the breakfast is best described as Egyptio-continental. Sometimes, bread rolls, cheese, meat, butter and jam with a hard-boiled egg and a little salad are delivered to the table pre-plated and wrapped in cling-film, with a choice of tea or weak coffee from a flask. Although you are not told, it is possible to swap the hard-boiled egg for an egg cooked in a different way, such as an omelet. When the hotel is busy (this is not usually connected to the tourist season but is when there is a conference at the hotel) breakfast becomes self-service. Some Egyptian hot dishes and a slightly wider range of breads and salads are added to the choice. In neither case is there any cooked American, English or continental choice and there are no cereals or fruit, even on request, although they co-operated when we chose to bring our own fruit and cereal to the table. You can, however, order from the lunch menu, which includes fruit cocktail if they have it in stock, but it is charged as an extra - LE8 in the case of a bowl of fruit. The tables appear to clean and fresh from a distance, but look more closely and they are clearly not changed daily so guests have to make do with any stains left by those who came before them.

Drinks and daytime snacks are available at the pool and in the restaurant beneath reception. There is also a restaurant in a separate building in the pool area. Dinner is available from 7pm until 10. The food is fine although choice is a little limited. It seems to take a long time to come and if you order different dishes they will not necessarily turn up together. Overall, there is nothing superlative about the meals or reason to come here if you are staying elsewhere, but they are very good value, competing in price with the value restaurants outside rather than the other hotels, where you can easily pay three times as much for something quite similar. Soups and salads are around LE6 - LE8, a steak is LE35 and there are other grills between LE30 and LE40, pastas are from LE6 and lasagne LE12. A non-optional service charge of 12% is added to the bills.

Access to the pool is a bit quirky. Like most of the hotels along the side of the Nile, the front entrance is at road level and the outdoor facilities at the rear are on a lower level. At the other hotels, there is a route from the guest rooms, via the lift, to the pool level at the rear, so that guests can emerge from their rooms and go to the pool without exhibiting themselves to the public in the main reception area. At the Lotus, there is a lift that goes from the guest room levels to the pool level, but access to the pool is only available through the restaurant. This is possible when the restaurant is empty, but not something to try when meals are in progress. The only alternative is to leave the lift at reception level, to go through reception, through the lounge, and emerge outside one level higher than the pool, going down outside steps to pool level. Not a major problem but not too clever either and indicative either of a lack of thinking through at hotel design stage or that the hotel is not really aimed at tourists. There are toilets at the pool level, but they are not signposted so you may miss them. As you face the hotel from the pool area they are to the left of the restaurant.

Beyond the pool there is a landing stage which is used by motor boats and feluccas bringing tour parties to this end of town. Parades of tourists through the pool and sunbathing area can feel intrusive.

Other facilities offered by the hotel include an internet area within main reception, where you can use their flat screen machines or your own laptop via wi-fi for LE20 an hour. You can plug your laptop into the hotel network at the New Pola or at various internet cafes for a little less and wi-fi is available free at places like Snacktime and McDonalds in town, but LE20 is good value for a hotel. The laundry is good value too, for example LE3 to wash and iron a pair of trousers.

A range of massage and beauty treatments are available, based in a shop unit in a basement-level shopping area in front of the hotel. There are other shop units there as well, but only one had been occupied by the early spring of 2008, some 2 years after the opening of the hotel. As the area is well supplied with tourist shops, services and restaurants at street level, it is hard to imagine the attraction of the underground ones in front of the Lotus, which may be destined to remain empty or to find another purpose. The only other unit in use houses the hotel's travel desk which offers the same tours as the other nearby agents for prices that are similar - a tad higher in one or two instances.

Whether you choose the Lotus will depend to a large extent on the rate you get. Not many package companies and not many hotel agents have arrangements with the Lotus, so there is not much price competition. Consequently, you may end up paying a little more for the Lotus than for a comparable hotel that is available through a greater number of agencies. It's Nile-side location, better views from many rooms and public area ambience make it worth booking if you can get it for a little more than the price of the 3 star hotels around, but don't pay anywhere near the same as you would pay for the Sonesta, Nile Palace or Sheraton and don't bother at all if a hearty English breakfast is important.