Total agreement that Morocco is far from off the beaten track. At least in terms of 'luxury hotel' markets.
Besides a bunch of independently owned
and managed properties that would fit squarely into my definition of 'luxury', all our favorite FT brand names are here!™: Aman, FS, Oberoi, MO, are here. Plenty of other brands that don't (always) make our general grade here too: VLE, Fairmont, Nobu, Sofitel, Habitas, so many other 'luxury' marques.
Maybe a Cheval or Maybourne or Baccaulgari (or any combo of similar stuff like that) in Marrakech and we may reach a critical mass/saturation point.
And there is stuff to do, wildly interesting things to see.
After having been a good ways around Marrakech/Fez at least, i'd say Marrakech and surroundings gotta now be top 20 lux-hotel markets at minimum. Maybe even top 15? 10?
Not Paris or Maldives or Greece or any number of Pac Island hubs.
There is a
whole lot to do in Morocco, from high-alpine climbing to ancient-tomb sightseeing, to desert overnights, to
amazing shopping - the real thing to labelworship, to palace-touring to beach-bumming/surfing to camel-riding (not recommended) to..... just lazing around at one's fabulous lodgings.
And back to luxury market, there are
no small number of luxury hotels, in and around Marrakech alone. We visited a whole lot of them over our 11 days. Luxury hotels/resorts by
anyone's standards, even the per-sniffity taste echelons of this particular sub's longtimers. Many and several very high-priced, very luxurious properties that - most of all - offer an astoundingly wide breadth of eclectic 'luxury hotel" type settings, styles and experiences.
Not
just that choice/eclecticism, most notable of all to me is that not any single one of these categories/preferences of luxury is tied to any one other, they are all interchangeable.
Setting choice?
Riads (and so much more) in the very-urban medina.
More desert-like, sprawling 'full-service' resorts in the hivernage and palmerai 'suburbs'.
Spectacular mountain resorts that are just as luxurious but nearly-inverse temps/climate/topography than either of the previous two.
VIBE settings and designs?
Calm/spa/pool/slow vs euro/modern/(refined) hype/bar-scene.
Classic looking/built luxury vs distinctly 20th/21st century modernism vs utterly of-place Moroccan palaces.
Morocco - really 'Marrakech' and environs alone - not only has each of these elements and styles and locales, you can basically mix and match setting/style/hotel. You can find ultra-calm quiet in the middle of the medina, any way you like it. And at least a fairly-spirited scene up in the mountains (Kasbah Tamadot) too.
So that's a long answer to
Livetotell s question about what there is to do in Morocco. Tons. Like, so much. Even 'just' around Marrakech.
Another poin
EuropeanPete made I'm not positive about.
AFAIK, the only way to get from the US to Morocco on a direct flight was a daily NY to Casablanca round trip. The airline is Royal Maroc.
If you're coming from anywhere in the US other than NYC , you will connect to that Casablanca flight through NYC.
(This was on a fair amount of research pre-trip, though hardly 'extensive' by this forum's aces, please do let us all know if I'm wrong).
If you want to fly direct from US to any of Marrakech's other 3 or 4 or 5 'major' airports, no dice.
We wanted to fly to Marrakech from NYC, and connections through other places on other airlines besides Royal Maroc (in our case, Paris w/ Air France) were shorter overall trip by several hours than the Casablance flight from NYC.
I'd say this makes it a pretty tough go for
Livetotell , based in Phoenix. Indeed for most non-EC folks in America, at least at the moment. For west coast peeps, I'd put their degree-of-difficulty on Casablanca right up there with Australia or Far East.
Happily, this may be changing as we were told exactly the same story by two different hotels' concierges:
They are currently doing some work at RAK (Marrakech airport), building some new runways that will be, by the eye's guesstimation, considerably longer than the airport's current longest. That much is apparent at take off and landing.
But we were also twice told that a major US airline - they told us which one, i just can't exactly remember which one, I believe it was Delta? - are soon adding daily nonstops to Marrakech. Starting with one daily, and probably more as the 'first real US pipeline to Marrakech' opens. Starting with flights from/to Miami and then, hopefully, NYC. "Soon'. Like, this year.
Heard that exact same story, with the exact same US carrier (90% sure Delta).
Once the US can establish some/any direct flights to Marrakech, really from any one of 5 or 6 major EC airports (Miami, NYC, DC, Boston, Philly, even Atlanta), that will surely unsaturate the market some and lead to significantly more US visitors..
I think I said this earlier, I am not at all positive you'd find it better. We really loved the 6-or-so hours we spent at Tamadot. It really is a cool property, total luxury. Beautiful setting, beautifully designed/decorated.
Olinto is much.... man, i revile the term 'slow resort', yuk...but....slower than Tamadot. Truly.
But not slower in a granola-eating, check-in-your-cell-phone and meditate-the-whole-time way.
It is 100% LUXURY, and has a bunch of bells/whistles. Tamadot also is 100% luxury, and very much to my and wifey's loving, just got a few more cocktail groups and 'casablanca' showing on a gigantic screen outside by the pool and similar 'happenings'. Yoga classes out in the graden. I love that stuff. Creative, fun. Just for
this trip and, i fear, for 'my age', Olinto was perfection.
Plenty to do. They likely don't have it (yet) on their 2003-looking website, but there's a whole bunch of excursions Olinto offered both onsite or over email once you inquire.
Everything from a road trip to Fez (we did that one day, as wifey was recovering from a kneebreak), to driving to any number of quaint valley/mt towns for real-life observing and fantastic real-world shopping (we did such a drive another day to Ourika). Most of the activities are geared to fully-ambulatory, nature-seeking people, though. Tons of hikes, climbs, excursions on foot to towns, horseback riding, desert camping, Olinto offers all of it.
Really, all of the high-end hotels in Marrakech seem to, regardless of size.
Olinto itself is quiet. But not geriatric, hardly. It's classy and contemporary.
And as i mentioned, there's a fantastic (tho single) bar/lounge at night.
One of the three nights a group of 4 or 5 french people were a bit inebriated (in a fun classy way, i swear), they started dancing to what ever disco type tune was playing round 11pm in there. Within 30 seconds, the staff had pushed aside a bunch of furniture, created a dance space for them (without making us move), cranked up the music, and completely switched the lighting over in one fell swoop. (not fog and lasers or an actual disco ball, mind you, but they had an instantaneous way of shining some different, very narrow 'spots' on all of the crazy crystals in the chandelier(s) and that created the same effect as the disco ball.)
I noticed the main bartender caught my wife's eye to make sure she was still 'cool' with the (fairly drastic) auditory/lighting change, and she saw that we were both laughing so hard that we couldn't have minded. In about 5 seconds we were up and doing far worse Balou-from-Jungle-Book dance moves than these much younger people ever could. This dance party went on for a good 15 minutes until everyone ran out of cocktails and sat down again.
I point out this story for two reasons. Not just to show that while maybe a 'slow retreat', Olinto has its moments of exuberance and 'action'. Even at low season, and half-booked.
But also as an example of the "ESP based service" we found there, pretty much at every minute we noticed the 'service'. Never overbearing. Just sorta 'pops outta nowhere'.