The Marrakech area is Morocco at its most intoxicating — and I'll be straight with you from the first line, because it saves disappointment later: this is an inland imperial city, not a beach. What it offers instead is arguably richer. A walled medina a thousand years old, the roar and theatre of the Jemaa el-Fna square at dusk, souks that swallow an afternoon, hidden riads with plunge pools behind studded doors, and the snow-capped High Atlas rising on the horizon within an hour's drive. Ringing the old city, the palm groves of the Palmeraie and the modern edge hold the big resort hotels with their gardens, spas and aqua parks. If you want culture, warmth, colour and a pool rather than a sea to swim in, the Marrakech area is one of the great short-haul escapes from the UK.
Every Marrakech-area holiday we sell is one financially protected booking — flights, transfers and hotel together under ATOL licence #11211 — and your ATOL Certificate arrives the moment you confirm, so you can see exactly how your holiday is financially protected before you part with a penny. And every hotel we put on this page has been inspected in person against our criteria, which in Marrakech matters more than most places, because a riad and a Palmeraie resort a few miles apart deliver two utterly different holidays, and a photograph tells you nothing about which one is yours.
I am Thomas Kaplan, Product Manager and Mediterranean specialist at GoToBeach, and I've spent twenty-eight years in European and North African travel — much of it with TUI and Thomas Cook before I came here to build the range I actually believe in. On my inspection trips to Marrakech I don't tour the suite the hotel wants to show me; I walk the standard rooms, the ones you'll actually be given, and I sit in the courtyard at four in the afternoon when the light goes gold and the call to prayer rolls across the rooftops, because that is when you learn whether a place has soul or just a good photographer. The question I carry into every property is the plain one: would I send my own family here, at this price, for this week? If the answer is no, it doesn't go on the page. You can read more about how I inspect these hotels before you book.
