Mogador Kasbah

The smell of the lobby was fishy for three days, after waking up it disappeared. The sound of the planes is very disturbing and loud. The breakfast is delicious and the service is courteous. Worth the price.

I travelled for business and stayed at this hotel for a little over a week, which seemed like a never-ending obstacle run. This is not a 5-star hotel by any stretch of imagination. Other than the ostentatious lobby with a massive chandelier, the rest of the property is poorly maintained and run down. There are two wings—one overlooking a very busy and noisy highway, and the other overlooking a pool with patios opening into the garden. I was given a room in the noisy wing which looked shabby, with scratched lamp shades, very poor A/C, and a telephone that did not work. There was no bathrobe or iron in the room, either. I reported it and asked for the phone to be fixed but that was ignored. In the evening I suddenly became aware of an intensifying acrid smell of chemicals coming from the hallway that was becoming intolerable. I was told that the hotel was undergoing a renovation and all the works had to be done after sunset. When I asked for another room, they claimed they were overbooked but reluctantly gave me another room down the hallway in the same wing. The room was slightly better, there were issues with the shower, but at least the A/C and the phone worked. As I found out later, they did offer rooms in the other, greener and more quiet wing, which was largely empty. The following day I asked for room service (the hotel restaurant only served breakfast and dinner, so lunch options were limited). I was told it would take about 30 minutes, but two hours and five phone calls later, my order still hadn’t arrived. Every time I called, I got a different answer. I asked to speak to the manager but was ignored. No apologies were given. Housekeeping services, too, left much to be desired—they would forget to bring fresh towels or bottled water. On our first day, my colleagues and I had to buy bottles of water from the hotel, the clerk came up with a random price which, as it turned out later, was three times the retail store price. We were never quite sure about the price for dinner buffet either as it kept changing randomly from day to day. Part of the problem is that the hotel staff barely speaks English, so unless you are fluent in Arabic or French, you won’t get very far. That said, I am not sure it is the language barrier that is the issue—it is mostly poor management with an attitude problem that doesn’t care.

Average throughout

Not so good extremely not good