What: Established in 1986, Camel Dive Club & Hotel specialises in Red Sea diving holidays. 
Where: Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
Responsible diving factor:
in August 2008 Camel launched a campaign called Eco tribe to bring together its various environmental activities, increase awareness and encourage action.
Sharm El Sheikh attracts many thousands of sun seeking visitors, not just divers. If not properly informed, these tourists who come to learn to dive, snorkel and swim on the reefs can have a major negative impact, causing irrevocable damage. With 10,000 guests a year Camel is in a position to influence many of Sharm’s visitors. Staff educate visitors about not touching the coral, climbing on the reefs or feeding the fish. As a partner of Thomas Cook, (who send 100,000 visitors a year to Sharm), Camel works with all 60 of their company reps about educating their clients.
Egyptian owned, Camel employs 400 staff, of whom 10 per cent are Bedouin and 70 per cent Egyptian. They offer all their staff English classes. Foreign staff are offered Arabic classes. 
They hold regular clean up events which stop an estimated 300kg of mainly plastic rubbish reaching the Red Sea every year .
They are working to reduce the impact of their hotel and diving operations. So far they have:
- ‘Reduced wateruse, detergent and energy use, by giving Camel Hotel guests the option of re-using their room towels instead of having them laundered every day.
- Introduced a solar heated system for their swimming pool. During winter this enables them to keep the pool at a comfortable temperature for diver training, without consuming large amounts of electricity.
- replaced plastic bags with paper and/or biodegradable bags across all of their operations
- Installed waste bins at Naama Bay jetty, to prevent rubbish from ending up in the water.
- Introduced caps for the tanks, to replace ‘tank tape’ (‘cap on’ indicates a full tank, ‘cap off’ an empty tank).
- eliminated plastic cup use on their boats
- Replaced older IT equipment with newer more efficient models
- Established the use of waste coffee grounds from restaurants, as fertilizer on flower beds around the hotel and staff houses.’
Camel Dive Club are a patron of Project Aware and an Aware Eco Operator. They make regular donations to support Project Aware and organize regular clean up events above and below the water. They also work with partners on monitoring local and endangered species and organising educational and informative events at the Camel Dive bar. They recently hosted Andrea Marshall or ‘Queen of Mantas’ as part of her research project into satellite tagging Manta Rays all over the world click here to read her blog post about searching for these ‘Egyptian flying carpets’.
Check out their news page to catch up with their latest initiatives, events and reports of whats been spotted by divers out there at the moment.
Camel Dive Club & Hotel were highly commended in the Best in a Marine Environment category at the 2009 Responsible Tourism Awards
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