I spent a weekend in the Ryad Mogador Menara, situated in a nice area just out of the hustle and bustle that is Marakech and never more than 10-20 DH from town loactions in a taxi. Definately a quality four star hotel with lovely communal areas and smart room interior. It's a relatively new six floor hotel with huge rooms with balconies, and beautiful baths (with phone, hair dryer, etc.) with all the standard four star amenities. Spotless cleaning. It has a nice pool, several restaurants, and a spectacular hall/lobby but is a "dry hotel" but you can grab a drink in next door hotel. Breakfast in the main restaurant was good. The Palais de Congres is next door and we watched from our balcony stars enter for the 2006 Marrakech film festival!

On arrival at the Ryad Mogador Menara all looked great. The hotel itself, main lobby, restaurant, pool area is all very impressive and very clean, but as time went on we became more a more frustrated with this hotel!!

There were 4 in our party - we had requested adjoining rooms - one of our rooms wasnt made up, the second a disabled room and they were not adjoining. "Eventually" we got the rooms changed but found in our rooms we had only one set of outside furniture, 2 chairs between 4, and the mini bar was not stocked. We must have asked for some more outdoor furniture 5 times but no joy, then we came home one night and ALL the furniture had gone, so you can guess how frustrated we were getting!! They did stock the mini bar but only in one room.

There is no tea and coffee making facilities in the rooms which I would expect of a 5 star. So we ordered room service tea/coffee -this never came. We tried again the next night and got told we would have to wait over an hour.

The food at breakfast was cold and not very impressive -paper napkins and dirty table cloths, definately not what you would expect of a 5 star. We didnt bother trying the evening menu!

Lunch at the outdoor pool grill was very poor - my friend was served up a prawn cocktail and the prawns were obviously off.

The reception staff were extremely surly, so we did ask to speak to the Manager a couple of times and even wrote him a letter, he turned out to be quite helpful.

Finally, dont be ripped off by the reception staff, on booking our return taxi to the airport we were told this would cost 200 dhm, even though we knew this should be around 60, 100 at the most. But we had had enough at this point and just booked it, only to be told we had to pay the receptionist and not the taxi driver, you come to your own conclusion on this!

Summary, nice decor, very clean, food poor, service poor, grumpy staff but definately not what you would expect of a 5 star service wise.

Karen
Norfolk

I recently participated in a two week organized grand tour of Morocco spending the nights in what were reputed to be "four star" hotels. The Ryad Mogador Menara was the only one which matched European levels of a quality four star. It's a relatively new six floor hotel with huge rooms with balconies, and beautiful baths (with phone, hair dryer, etc.) with all the standard four star amenities. Spotless cleaning. Located on Ave. Mohammed VI (formerly Ave. President Kennedy)in the nice Hivernage quarter next to the Marrakech convention center (Palais de Congres), it has a huge pool, several restaurants, and a spectacular hall/lobby. Food in the main restaurant was excellent, and served buffet style, both breakfast, lunch and dinner. No alcoholic beverages. Stated low season prices were 1400 Dh single and 1600 Dh double, breakfast included.