The 18 Best Resorts in Morocco

Richard Branson's mother spotted this estate while her son was off planning a balloon expedition, which tells you everything about the kind of people who end up here. A luxury hotel at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, about forty-five minutes from Marrakech, it holds an antiques dealer's old collection inside traditional Moorish walls, a deep-blue reflecting pool in the courtyard, and ten Berber tent suites with Jacuzzis for the glampers among us. The Michelin Guide awarded it 3 Keys.

Thousands of seashells cover the lobby walls of this grand seaside resort on what Moroccans call their Riviera, and that's before you get to the zellige tile, marble mosaics, and hand-carved wood brought together by artisans working in traditional craft. Suites come with four-poster beds and private terraces; beachfront villas add their own pools and dedicated butlers. The spa and the dining rooms, run by a roster of European chefs, give guests reasons not to leave.

The design lifts from the Medersa Ben Youssef, a revered piece of Moroccan Islamic architecture, and the effect across 28 acres of gardens and orchards is suitably monumental. This is a grand resort hotel well outside the medina, so expect Atlas mountain views, enormous suites that some villas stretch into riad territory, an Ayurvedic spa, and three restaurants ranging from fine-dining Indian to poolside plates. A free shuttle runs to the center when the grounds stop being enough.

A 25-suite palace hotel in the Palmeraie, Marrakech's palm-grove district, where your airport transfer arrives in a London black cab because of course it does. Suites are called Harims, meaning a palace apartment, and they're furnished with the spare confidence of rooms that don't need to try hard. A floodlit pool, a billiards room, a cigar selection, spa treatments in a vaulted cellar. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Out in the Palmeraie, the palm grove where Marrakech goes to breathe, Palais Ronsard is an expansive colonial-style resort that wraps around multiple pools and gardens as if it has nowhere to be. The interiors lean into the grand period style without apology. A hammam spa, two restaurants, a cocktail bar, and a pool house keep you from having to venture anywhere, which in the Marrakech heat is a design feature. It holds a Michelin Key.

A ksar, the North African castle form, earthen walls enclosing gardens of palm and bougainvillea, is what greets you at this boutique hotel outside Essaouira, which holds a Michelin Key. Two pools, two restaurants, and a hammam fill the compound, and the adult side of each is pointedly kept separate from the under-twelve contingent. Terracotta tile floors, Berber rugs, and argan-oil products in the showers; no televisions unless you ask.

Sitting at 1,650 meters in the Middle Atlas, Michlifen Resort is a mountain lodge where Moroccan carved wood meets Alpine timber and roaring fires, which is either a design contradiction or a very clever one. Ifrane gets called "Little Switzerland," and the resort leans into that with a 3,500-square-meter spa, a golf course overlooking forested slopes, and suites with roll-top baths. It holds a Michelin Key.

Neo-Moorish arches and colorful murals give this Sofitel beach resort a look that goes well beyond the usual minimalist-luxury formula. It sits on the Mediterranean coast near M'Diq, a stretch most visitors skip on their way between Tangier and Ceuta, which means the beach stays quiet. Multiple pools, a full spa, and a cocktail bar cover the bases, while the main restaurant cycles through Moroccan, French, Italian, and Asian cooking in a room almost as vivid as the food.

Five houses spread across the Palmeraie, each with its own pool and gardens, and the kind of décor that treats Moroccan and broader African craft as something to live with rather than pose next to. This is a resort where the owners, an ethnobotanist and a Senegalese-Parisian designer, built excursions by bike, sidecar, and camelback around respectful cultural access. Dinners move between a communal room and the sprawling gardens depending on the evening's mood.

Seven acres of gardens and groves spread through the Palmeraie, just outside the medina's fray, making Les Deux Tours feel more like a private compound than a hotel. The 44 rooms and suites are split among villas and pavilions done in a style that nods to Marrakech's romantic past without cosplaying it. A hammam, a gastronomic restaurant, a poolside option, and, for some reason, a sushi bar round out the picture.

Less than an hour from Marrakech, Caravan by Habitas Agafay drops you into the rocky Agafay Desert with the Atlas Mountains sitting on the horizon. The 20 tented lodges borrow from Berber design and run on solar power, though the beds and stone terraces signal that roughing it isn't really the point. Pools, a spa, a yoga pavilion, and camel rides fill the days, with Moroccan cooking at the open-air restaurant to finish them.

At the foot of the Atlas Mountains, about twenty minutes outside Marrakech, this small eco-resort runs hard against the assumption that Morocco is all terracotta and dust. Fourteen rooms and suites open onto either garden terraces or mountain views, and the whole place is quiet in a way the medina never will be. There's a spa, a hammam, poolside lunch, and dinners that lean deep into Moroccan flavors.

Eighteen plush safari-style tents arranged around a pool in the Agafay desert, close enough to Marrakech for a day trip but far enough to feel like the exact middle of nowhere. Each tent has a king bed, a living room, a hot shower, and a wood-burning stove for cold desert nights, all decorated with Berber touches and a sharp contemporary eye. Horseback rides, mountain biking, and a nearby lake fill the days when the pool loses its appeal.

Geometric entryway drama gives way to rolling Atlas foothills in every direction at this sixteen-room countryside retreat just south of Marrakech. The team calls it a "peasant palace," and the name earns its irony: every room has its own outdoor space, the restaurant terrace overlooks open hills, and the pool just reflects sky. The décor leans rustic but skips the usual riad signifiers in favor of vivid textiles and what can only be called scruffy-chic lamps.

A keyhole-shaped door in a coral facade opens onto a Indo-Moorish villa about eighteen kilometers outside Marrakech, where terracotta passageways connect firelit lounges, mosaic dining rooms, and open courtyards before spilling into gardens around an olive-tree-framed pool. Nine rooms and suites are decorated with carved doors, ornamental lanterns, and green marble soaking tubs. The place rents as a whole villa, too, if you have that kind of friends-trip ambition.

A luxury desert camp on the rocky Agafay plateau, about an hour from Marrakech's medina chaos, where each private tent comes with a freestanding soaking tub positioned to face the open desert. The infinity pool looks out toward the Atlas Mountains, evenings run to Moroccan dinners with live music under a sky with almost no light pollution, and the name is not incidental: this is a place people come to stargaze in earnest.

The sandy-colored low-rise buildings circle a lagoon pool with the Atlantic just beyond, which makes it easy to forget you're at a Fairmont and feel like you've stumbled onto something more personal. This is a full-scale beach resort outside Taghazout, a fishing village an hour from Agadir, with rooms starting at a generous fifty square meters, a spa, a surf club, golf nearby, and a Morimoto outpost for when surfing works up an expensive appetite.

Agadir sits where the Atlas Mountains, the Sahara, and the Atlantic all run out of road, and this beachfront Sofitel leans hard into that geography. It's a self-contained luxury resort with a serious thalassotherapy and spa program, rooms that trend toward the lavish end of the dial, and restaurants that run Moroccan and Mediterranean flavors through a French filter. The kind of place you don't leave much, which is quietly the point.