Valeria Dar Atlas

holiday. We booked through Easyjet, and the transfer to the hotel was very good. The check in was smooth and we were shown to our room. The room it self was clean - beds were comfortable, the bathroom was in need of an update. we heard round the pools they are upgrading slowly so maybe we were just unfortunate. We were in a ground floor room with a outside space which had no where to hang towels. But you could hire towels at a cost from the hotel, maybe this is what everyone else did Food- was plentiful, always something to eat and yes there was always the basics of pasta pizza and chips everyday. but why go on a holiday abroad not to try the country's food ? The struggle to find a table and then ask for cutlery was sometimes a pain. the restaurant had a table where you could get wine by the glass and a fizzy drinks dispenser (always a queue) the bar at night was horrific- this could have been alleviated if they had a fizzy dispenser there as some people don't drink alcohol and just wanted something soft. they had a self serve coffee machine, why not do the same for soft drinks ? the glasses- Just give up on glass and invest in nice plastic ones. they ran out constantly ( we had joined a Facebook group prior to trip this was the biggest gripe) and brought our own plastic cups which the staff were happy to fill. The shuttle bus into Marrakesh was really good. The pools and the staff were fantastic, the animation team were great but not too pushy, the quiet pool was lovely, the main pool was lovely too. Evening entertainment- is good get yourself involved. the white party out the front was really good, and the foam party looked really fun for the children, never made it to the Morrocan restuarant or the nightclub so cant comment

1. The Rooms and The Staff - ⭐️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️

The first room we got allocated in, number 2003, had no working air conditioning, no WiFi, no towels, was scruffy with chipped walls, cracked tiles, stains on the mattresses, and on top of that, it was infested with ants and spiders. When we initially complained at the reception, we were informed that someone will come to clean up and fix the air conditioning at 11:30pm as that is when the night shift starts, but we didn’t even get an apology. Nobody came to clean the room, but an engineer arrived on time and managed to switch the air-con on but it still didn’t blow any cold air despite engineer’s reassurance that it only needs 10 minutes to cool the room down. We then also noticed that there are lots of ants in the beds and under the bedding so we returned to the reception to request a room change. The receptionist could not care any less, handed my partner a keycard to another room and said “try this one maybe”. We were not offered any help with moving luggage between the rooms nor for anyone to even show us the way to the new room. The new room number 1212 had a somewhat working air conditioning, fresh towels and although wasn’t cleaned properly for new guests, it didn’t seem to have any insects so we settled for that one. In the morning, we investigated the room and noticed the same issues as in the previous one - stains on the mattresses, damaged furniture, dirty bedding ripped alongside the bottom where the buttons would normally be, dirty drinking glasses, cracked tiles and chips on the walls, now also with dead mosquitoes squashed into them and splats of blood from said mosquitoes being squashed. We also noticed the WiFi is extremely intermittent with majority of time not working at all, the air conditioning is barely cooling the room down, the sink and shower drains are blocked and each morning between 6am and 8am the water supply gets completely switched off. Additionally, the mattresses are rock hard and the room has tons of mosquitoes in it despite us keeping the balcony doors closed at all times so it’s impossible to get a good night’s rest. With this room being on first floor, we had the balcony but this was unusable due to the overgrown bushes taking up nearly the entire balcony space until the gardener came to cut it on our 7th day of the stay. It’s also worth mentioning that both rooms looked nothing like the photographs - the rug, dressing table, mirror, stool, chair and luggage rack were all missing, and the very little furniture that was left was all chipped and scruffy. It only added salt to the wound seeing the hotel has shared photos of newly renovated rooms on their Facebook page whilst we were still stuck in these horrible conditions. On the aspect of room service, it can be hit and miss - sometimes the towels don’t get changed even if you leave them on the floor or the toilet paper and bottled water doesn’t get replaced so you have to help yourself to the staff stash if you run out, sometimes they’ll clean your room twice a day and even leave you surplus of supplies, however, it seems that the bathroom is never cleaned properly no matter what. Additionally, on the 8th day of our stay both keycards to our room got disabled and we had to trek to the reception to switch them back on as we couldn’t get into our room - again no apology from the receptionist. On our 3rd day there was 19 Jet2Holidays customers complaining to the representative about the same issues so these must be consistent problems in most rooms.

2. The Food - ⭐️⭐️⭕️⭕️⭕️

Generally the food is edible however it’s nearly the same every single day with most of it not tasting great. If you’re vegetarian, you can forget about having tasty meals as you will face a choice of tasteless pasta with barely any sauce on it, chickpeas that are uncooked, mix of overcooked carrots, broccoli and cauliflower that don’t even have any salt on them and a pile of equally tasteless couscous. On day 5 of our stay we gave up on vegetarian diet just to be able to eat something that doesn’t taste crap, but that wasn’t a massive improvement neither. The only thing they can cook somewhat well here is chicken and turkey. The soft drinks machine is constantly out of everything bar the 7up and even then it’s completely switched off during breakfast, the cappuccino in the coffee machine is actually a cheap hot chocolate not coffee, the water machine does not have cold water and in the juice section where the juices are brought over in jugs, they are being topped up by the staff with bottled water instead of being replaced with fresh juice - these are also not cold by the way. Anything chocolate flavoured tastes more like fake chocolate (a bit like Nesquick) and nearly nothing is labelled properly so you have to guess what you’re eating half of the time. The main restaurant constantly runs out of plates, glasses and utensils so unless you get there right at the start of a meal, you will spend 15 minutes trying to find something to put your tasteless carrots on, and even then it will probably be dirty as the plates and glasses always have dirt on them, to the point I saw a pink lipstick stain on a glass rim one evening. The buffet restaurant’s interior is pretty consistent with what we saw in the rooms - stained, broken furniture, dirt marks on the walls, cracked windows etc.

Besides the main canteen, you should have a choice of 3 a’la carte restaurants but despite Jet2Holidays stating we get one in price of our stay, we were told by the reception we’d have to pay and it took an intervention from the Jet2 representative to get booked into one free of charge. We got booked into the Moroccan a’la carte restaurant and quickly realised there is no choice of meals at all, and nobody cares about your allergies or food intolerances. We were told to arrive in the restaurant at 19:30, but weren’t served the starter until 20:30. The salad and a seafood pastry looked nice but were both inedible, the main course was an ok chicken with good old tasteless couscous and for dessert we were served dry cookies which were meant to come with Moroccan tea but we never received it. The whole thing took 3 hours, a few customers were offered some wine but not us, table cloths on our and the neighbouring tables were ripped and the service took ages so a lot of people left before all the courses were even served.

Additionally there are 3 bars in the hotel - one by each pool and one in the reception area. The only bar where alcohol is included is the one at the reception but they constantly run out of beer there, and there is also a problem with glasses availability and their cleanliness, not to mention the constant smell of sick in the entire bar area. The other two pool bars have alcohol but will charge you for it even when the reception bar runs out. It’s also worth mentioning that the “bar” by the adults pool is actually a metal table on which bottles of soft drinks are laying around all day long so you’re served lukewarm pop in dirty glasses, and despite there clearly being a building right by the pool that was once used for snacks, you can’t get any food by this pool at all so for snacks you’ll have to trek the whole length of the hotel to either the buffet restaurant or the snack bar by the main pool. Now on the note of the “snack bar” which is a completely not ventilated room behind the main pool’s bar - we went there once for “tea time” but there was no tea in sight, some dried out pastries and not even a fork to eat them with. If you fancy some ice cream by the pool you’re not in luck as the two flavours of ice cream - fake chocolate and imaginary pistachio - are only served for one hour a day during lunch, in the buffet restaurant. The hotel is also quite keen on using cheap plastic plates and spoons instead of the proper ones, but that’s probably cause they constantly run out of the latter.

3. The Hotel Grounds - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭕️

This is probably the only thing the hotel is doing right. The entire gardens area is phenomenal with lush manicured greenery, beautiful pond with ducks, pheasants and peacocks roaming around it and tiny birds chirping in the trees. There are some benches in the park area and the whole place looks dreamy after dark when the park lights get switched on. The walk to the individual riads is also lovely with flower bushes, palm trees and small fountains pathing the way throughout the hotel. The only issues here would be that some of the lights and exterior walls could do with a bit of TLC, that the fountains inside most of the riad courtyards are never on, and that at certain points during the day, there is a strong sewage smell around the garden and in the riads.

4. The Hotel Facilities - ⭐️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️

As for the hotel facilities you have two decent sized swimming pools which are moderately clean besides the stairway into the adults pool which has some dirt and black mould on each step’s edge. There is plenty of loungers, but no tables to put the drinks on so most people resort to taking chairs from the bar area and use them as tables instead. On a few occasions we saw some tissue and rubbish in the swimming pool and nobody seemed too bothered to come fish it out the whole day we were there. The communal bathrooms are available in the pool areas and in the reception with the first ones being very clean but the reception ones looking like a toilet in a rundown pub with the middle stall in ladies toilet having a large hole to the left of the stall doors, inside which huge cockroaches live and they will come out during the evening so beware if you’re skittish like me. You also have access to the tennis court, volleyball court and ping pong tables, but we have not used those during our stay so can’t voice an opinion on those, I believe those are payable separately though. There is the spa which is located at the back of the hotel and the prices are very reasonable, however again, we did not use that option neither as after seeing the hygiene levels around the rest of the hotel, we didn’t trust it. One afternoon we walked to the sister hotel to check out the “Aquapark” and discovered it takes 10 minutes to get to the entrance of the hotel and then another 10 minutes to traverse through the hotel grounds to the spot with the slides. The slides seem ok however I would not call this small shallow pool with four slides a water park and one of those slides was out of use as well. We ended up returning to the hotel and not using the slides as the drinks in the sister hotel were not part of the all inclusive and trekking 20 minutes just to get a glass of coke each time we’re thirsty did not sound like fun.

5. Overall Conclusion - ⭐️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️

The hotel’s exterior is really pretty with local architecture styles visible throughout the property and with the stunning greenery and wildlife present at every step, but that doesn’t make up for the extremely poor customer service provided by most of the staff, shockingly low levels of hygiene throughout the hotel and lack of facilities that make up “all inclusive” as what you receive is more of a bad quality full board. If I was offered to travel to this hotel free of charge again, I would still refuse to stay in such conditions. It is shameful that the management of the hotel who is informed of all these issues still allows people to travel here, as I know that in any more regulated country this place would be closed down by government already due to clear health and safety risks. Don’t be fooled by the pretty photos and shorts posted by the hotel online and don’t trust the 5 star reviews you see on here as there honestly is no way anyone who isn’t paid to give them a positive review or anyone who has more than two braincells would rate this hotel any higher than one star.

We wanted to thank our Jet2 Representative, Abderrahman, for showing us compassion during this time of distress and trying to help us with things despite not being able to do much. Jet2Holidays as a company however, should be ashamed of themselves for allowing their customers to travel to this property at all in the first place, and we will be raising a formal complaint upon arriving back home tonight.