Iberostar Club Palmeraie Marrakech

We had a great time at the hotel. The staff are very friendly and attentive, I particularly enjoyed the golf sessions with Mustapha, i just need to put his instructions into practice! The rooms were spacious and the food and drinks were good on the whole. One suggestion is to replace the well worn table tennis bats and more balls please! 😊

The room was far too noisy at night. We were woken up around five times. The AC unit spluttered and banged, and room-to-room we could hear lots of noises, including other guests urinating in the toilet, moving and turning in their bed, and noises from sockets and fittings on the adjoining wall directly where our heads rested, it would bang next to your pillow. Footsteps from rooms above and in the corridor transferred continually and loudly into the room and repeatedly woke us, this went on until around 3am. Running water and plumbing noises, including toilets flushing and showers, were clearly audible through the walls like a waterfall at times. Cats were also heard fighting outside for most of the night, with the windows closed. Our room was put directly opposite the elevator and a water fountain, so these were also heard throughout the night - the elevator doors banging, the water fountain vibration, other guests dragging luggage or banging containers onto the water fountain. We slept probably a total of three hours in short bursts. We tried to contact the hotel using the in-room phone twice, but it didn't work. We even tried using ear buds, but individual loud noises still woke us up, and we didn't think it was reasonable to need ear buds to sleep in a hotel.

We felt exhausted in the morning and went to the desk for help. We were told it was our fault for booking this particular "tier" of room, that no other rooms were available, and that we could try going to bed earlier. They also said that the manager was in a meeting and couldn't help. When we questioned this, we were asked to return in a couple of hours. I wrote down a description of the noise issues and the desk took a photo of it and said they would show it to the manager as soon as they could. We came back to the desk three times during the morning, and each time were told to come back later. No one ever apologised or validated our concerns. After about 5 hours, the desk got a porter to show us another room - by this time we had booked transport out of the hotel as no one was helping us - we felt vulnerable and unsupported, and we could not face another night of 2 hours sleep. Their tone was consistently dismissive, we were treated as an annoyance and they blamed us for the noise because 'you chose that tier of room'. Repeated requests to speak to a manager were not accommodated. There was no accountability and no real effort to understand or sympathise with what had happened.

Regardless of the "tier" of a room, being unable to sleep because of significant noise is not something a customer should simply be blamed for - it is avoidable. Reasonable noise control so that guests can sleep is a basic expectation of a hotel, particularly of a four-star hotel, so is understanding and customer-centric address of issues.

What makes this particularly disappointing is that I contacted the hotel a week before our check-in date specifically to ask for a quieter room if possible; "Hello, We are looking forward to joining you soon. Is there any way I might request being allocated a room in a quieter part of the hotel?"

Despite anticipating the issue and communicating this beforehand, we were given the room described above, and when it was noisy, we were blamed.

We would certainly not book here again, and feel others should know about the noise and staff issues, so you can make an informed decision, particularly if being able to sleep is important to you. I can see other reviews do mention the noise, and it would help if the hotel took us seriously in the first place.

We found the hotel's response unreasonable and it was particularly upsetting to be blamed ourselves and then have to return several times simply to try to get help. It is also concerning that the room phone wasn't working, as this meant we could not contact the hotel from the room if we needed assistance, including in an emergency.

We asked several times to speak to a manager but were repeatedly told that she was busy and could not help. We had spent the entire morning trying to find understanding for our concerns and help us find a solution, and by that point we no longer had confidence in the hotel resolving the situation. When we asked Expedia for help, they said the hotel wasn't answering their calls - they tried three times, and emailed the hotel, but they would not answer.

We checked out early because we could no longer trust the room or the hotel's handling of the situation - it was poorly handled and left us feeling unsafe. We were asked what was wrong when we tried to check-out and only then was the manager contacted - despite repeatedly being told that she had been informed, when she eventually appeared she seemed to have no knowledge of our problems. Someone then followed us to our taxi and attempted to stop us from leaving through the taxi window.

We really wanted to have a nice time here. We weren't expecting complete silence at night, just a reasonable level of noise comfort in our room and a hotel that would care for us; we simply wanted someone to understand what had happened, show us compassion and help us find a reasonable solution after an extremely poor night's sleep - instead we were disregarded, blamed and made to keep returning for help. All of this after explicitly asking for a quieter room in advance, but regardless, the room we were assigned is simply not noise appropriate.

This has been one of the worst experiences we have had in a hotel, not just because of the room, but because of how the hotel operates and the way concerns are handled. By the end, we were uncomfortable talking to the hotel and could not trust them anymore. Our concerns were treated without the care you would reasonably expect from a 4-star family resort. I cannot recommend this hotel.