The Mövenpick Mansour Eddahbi Marrakech, an ACCOR hotel, is a business hotel that seems to be geared mostly toward corporate meetings and business travel. It’s an outstanding facility for that type of business, but I’m not sure an individual leisure traveler would really be very happy being among a throng of corporate meeting attendees. Having said that, we enjoyed our stay there.
Located in L’Hivernage area, on the beautiful Mohammed VI avenue in the city center, near the Medina and just 4 km from the international airport, the Mövenpick Marrakech features over 500 rooms and suites, a spa, a hammam, and a fitness room, along with well-tended gardens and three splendid swimming pools. It’s a 10-minute drive to the Djemaa el-Fna Square and the Mansour’s Badi Palace.
The hotel was reimagined by the French architectural Studio MHNA in a $100-million refit into a palatial property with giant, gilded bird cages that house metallic falcons, marble corridors with idiosyncratic furniture, gilded moucharabieh screens, and water channels that channel water everywhere you walk. It isn’t really all that intimate, but it’s a feast for the eyes.
The hotel is smoke-free and soundproofed as much as possible for a large group of buildings, and there is free WiFi in all public areas and rooms. There is free parking, either valet or self-parking. There are three restaurants, a bar, and a coffee shop/café, one poolside bar, and, of course, room service.
Saray serves an international buffet breakfast with local Moroccan dishes in a setting rich with Berber and Arab Andaluz influences. Jamra Organic & Healthy Living serves a mix of organic dishes, a great variety of salad options, and a very large assortment of fresh fruit. Other restaurants on the property offer Mediterranean dishes, a terrace bar, and drinks and tapas around the pool. There is also a night club, but we didn’t go there.
One of the advantages I would like to mention is the multilingual staff. The languages mainly spoken in Morocco are Moroccan and French. If you don’t have facility with those two, it can be difficult to communicate with locals as we found in other press trips in the past. At this hotel, they also speak Spanish, German, Italian, and Arabic.
Having stayed in numerous 5-star properties throughout the years and having worked with a top hotel marketing and reservations company for 20, there are a few things that should be addressed by management, particularly dealing in the international travel arena. I believe it’s a question of proper staff training, especially the front desk. Unfortunately, at the time of our stay, this property was seriously understaffed.
In most of the 5-star hotels, the staff to guest ratio is one to one. In the better Asian hotels, it’s two to one, and in the best properties, like the Royal Club Evian, the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, the Peninsula Hong Kong, and the Pierre in New York, the ratio is three to one.
Yes, the staff was as helpful as possible, but there should be more people available, especially at reception and restaurants.
All things considered, I think this hotel is still one of the more luxurious and visually exciting North African hotels I’ve experienced.
The author received a complimentary stay at this hotel, but as always, we are dedicated to giving you our honest opinion of our experiences.
Manos Angelakis was one of the founders, the former Managing Editor for 25 years, the former Managing Editor Emeritus, and former Senior Food & Wine Writer of LuxuryWeb Magazine. He passed away in 2025 as an accomplished travel writer, photographer, and food and wine critic based in Hackensack, New Jersey. As a travel writer, he wrote extensively about numerous cities and countries. Manos was also certified as a Tuscan Wine Master and traveled to wine-producing areas in order to evaluate firsthand the product of top-rated vineyards. His articles in other publications include Vision Times and Epoch Times.
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