Three hotels, three very different destinations and one unwavering commitment to excellence: Royal Mansour continues to set the benchmark for luxury hospitality in Morocco.
What’s in a name? Plenty, sometimes. The Royal Mansour collection of hotels – three of them at present, with whispers of more soon to come – was conceived by Morocco’s current ruler, Mohammed VI. Given that implicit “fit for a king” promise, the hopes of any prospective guest are automatically set uncommonly high.
Having just returned from a trip to Morocco during which I spent two or three nights in each of the Royal Mansour properties, in Marrakech, Casablanca and Tamuda Bay, I’m pleased to confirm that my high hopes were effortlessly surpassed and that each of these hotels is likely to delight even the most pernickety and jaded of monarchs. (Pernickety he may be, but Mohammed VI is far from jaded, as photographs of him beaming like a schoolboy while astride a jet-ski would seem to attest.)
The Royal Mansour Marrakech opened in 2010 – though it might have been yesterday, or, if seen in the pale light before dawn, centuries ago. A walled city within the walled city, the Atlas Mountains on the horizon, the Sahara beyond. This is a place of powerful romance and sensuousness, set amid acres of luxuriant gardens, scented with orange blossom, alive with the sounds of running water and birdsong.
The accommodation comprises not rooms but riads, 53 of them, of varying sizes and configurations, each spread over several floors with its own inner courtyard, rooftop terrace and other characteristic features. Some 1,500 artisans laboured to create this stunning showcase of local craftsmanship.
One consequence of the hotel’s riad style is an extraordinary degree of privacy. Should you wish to disappear into your own sumptuous bubble, you can. Should you enjoy participating in the great hotel game of seeing and being seen, the Royal Mansour Marrakech’s bars and restaurants are pure theatre, whether it’s Hélène Darroze’s Le Grande Brasserie, Massimiliano Alajmo’s Sesamo, the poolside Le Jardin with its ever-changing roster of superstar guest chefs or the signature (and unsurpassably opulent) La Grande Table Marocaine. The people-watching is as exceptional as the dining.
The hotel is also an ideal base from which to make forays into the city centre. Marrakech is a byword for a certain kind of photogenic glamour, which is as conspicuous today as it ever was. Returning from the teeming streets of the medina to Royal Mansour Marrakech, one dream is merely replaced by another.
Casablanca, three hours’ drive southwest of Marrakech, is another world entirely, the sprawling, dynamic economic centre of Morocco. Huge port, huge mosque, huge reputation (though one that’s based to a considerable extent on a movie of the 1940s that was filmed almost entirely in Hollywood). What’s less widely talked about is the city’s astonishing diversity. It comprises several quite distinct neighbourhoods – including not one but two medinas, one old, one new. You can’t fail to notice the visual contrasts as you move through the city and the impression of diversity they create contributes greatly to the unique atmosphere.
The Royal Mansour Casablanca occupies a gleaming high-rise tower near the crossroads of several of these neighbourhoods, the old medina and port in one direction and the so-called Petit Paris, built by French colonists in their own image, and the glass-and-steel business district in the other. The hotel’s 149 rooms and suites reflect this dynamic eclecticism, combining elegant Art Deco flourishes with traditional Moroccan and slick contemporary elements. So, too, does the unmissable Le Rooftop restaurant on the 20th floor. There can be no more spectacular vantage point in all Casablanca to watch the sun set over the Atlantic, the whole mad jumble of the city glazed in honeyed evening light.
Nor, for that matter, can there be a better place to get a haircut than at Le Salon Barbier, the barbershop run by Sarah Hamizi that occupies another corner of the same floor – a place so chic and so popular that it has a dedicated express lift. Its vast windows face east rather than west, however, making it ideal, as the present writer can attest, for a morning appointment.
It wouldn’t be too much to say that, since its opening in 2024, the Royal Mansour Tamuda Bay has put the beautiful but often overlooked Mediterranean coast of northern Morocco on the map for international visitors. About time, too. It enjoys a winning combination of white-sand beaches, the dramatic backdrop of the Rif Mountains and startling proximity to Europe – the coast of Spain is clearly visible, 53 kilometres across the Strait of Gibraltar.
Of the three Royal Mansour properties, Tamuda Bay is the subtlest, design-wise, conceived in a richly textured palette of sand and shell, sea and sky. Its 55 suites and villas, its half-dozen restaurants and bars, its amply equipped boathouse, its pools and padel courts, its kids’ and teens’ clubs, and its state-of-the-art medi-spa – all are aligned with a kilometre-long beach, dotted with pastel-toned parasols and fringed with tall palms and meticulously tended gardens. To get around, there are charmingly old-fashioned bicycles (in three sizes), as well as a fleet of electric buggies, which can be summoned at a moment’s notice.
Here once more the food and wellness offering is of the highest possible standard. Eric Fréchon offers sublime French-Japanese fusion at La Table; Massimiliano and Raffaele Alajmo deliver irresistible classic Italian at Coccinella; Quique Dacosta celebrates the hyper-local at Le Méditerranée. The spa, meanwhile, is the largest in the Royal Mansour collection, at 4,300 square metres, and enough in itself to warrant an extended stay.
Earlier this year the Royal Mansour Tamuda Bay played an ace nobody saw hidden up its sleeve when it extended its inventory beyond the beachfront to include a landlocked, two-bedroom, exclusive-use villa in the leafy foothills of the Rif Mountains, known simply as The Lodge. Though less than half an hour from the hotel, it feels light years away – fit for a milord anglais, complete with open fireplaces, botanical prints, leather sofas and swagged paisley curtains.
For all the marked differences between the Royal Mansour properties, they share a commitment not only to excellence in hotel terms but also to the specifics of their location, to the many and diverse things that make Morocco so uniquely and magically Moroccan.
