The 11-day trip was well planned and offered ...

Morocco | May 9 - May 19, 2024

The 11-day trip was well planned and offered us an overview of Morocco, it's major cities (except for Tangier), and a view of its customs and culture. There were tours in each of the cities and we enjoyed meeting with our guides and driver.

Our driver, Said, was very helpful and informative. We expected only the driver would just take us from city to city and might speak only limited English. Instead, Said was more of a guide than just a driver, explaining about the areas we were passing through, helping us get to our riads or to restaurants, serving as a translator on occasion, and helping us understand some of the customs, such as amounts to tip and how to bargain (which we didn't do very well). He seemed genuinely concerned for our welfare and needs.

We had eight guides in all. Two stand out in my memory: Ibrahim in Rabat and Bouchra in Meknes. Both were excellent, providing more than just a city tour. One complaint about the tours is that some were overly long and tiring. A six-hour tour is exhausting, even if part is walking and part driving. Another is that the tours focused on visiting the bazaars in several cities. Walking through a bazaar for two to three hours is overwhelming. Doing this in three different cities is overkill. While there may be differences between the bazaars in different places, there's also a lot of similarity. In particular, it felt like the only part of Marakkech which we saw was the bazaar, rather than seeing more of this large city.

There were some communication issues. The driver made stops along the route between cities, sometimes to just take a break, sometimes for a visit that we might find interesting, like to a ceramics factory or argon oil cooperative. These were not on the itineray we were provided and I asked the tour operator for details while en route so that we would have a better understanding of what the daily plan was and allow us to decide what we wanted to see and what we did not. The reply was unresponsive, saying that they don't provide this to "take stress off traveler's shoulders", when obviously the lack of information had caused us additional stress.

The riads and hotels which we stayed at on our trip (with one exception) were well appointed and comfortable. All of the hosts were very accommodating and the breakfasts were extensive. In particular, we liked the Riad El Yacout where we stayed two nights. The manager (son of the owner) offered us the plush Ambassador Suite when we asked for a room on the first floor. Our waiter, Marco, was charming, attentive, and engaging. We enjoyed talking with him about his family and more.

The hotel which was booked in Casablanca for our last night in Morocco, the Kenzi Sisi Maarouf, was a business class hotel situated near the airport, with nothing of interest nearby. Our driver took us to and from a restaurant the city center, about a half hour drive, on the night before we left. We had a late afternoon flight the next day and did not need an early transfer to the airport. Instead of seeing the downtown Casablanca area in our last morning in Morocco, we sat for three hours in our hotel room and looked out at the back side of a Coca-Cola sign, before leaving early for the airport. The tour operator's response to our complaint about being booked into an unsatisfactory airport hotel was that they booked us into a hotel near the airport.

We had an excellent tour of Morocco. I would have given the tour specialist five stars except for the poor response to our request for more details on the itinerary and the poor selection of our final hotel.