Hotels

Choose a hotel over a riad if you arrive by car, with small children or with a wet kite every evening. In Essaouira the hotel is the beach road’s form of lodging. Most stand outside the ramparts, 10 to 25 minutes on foot from place Moulay Hassan. It gives what a riad cannot: a car park at the door, a lift, a pool, rooms for four. We have not yet collected enough rates published by the hotels themselves to give a nightly range. For the courtyard house inside the walls, see our riads.

Three addresses: the beach road, the medina, the forest

The bay first, where most of the hotels are. They line boulevard Mohammed V, which follows the beach along the new town. The beach is across the road, the nearest kite schools 200 to 600 metres away on foot by our calculation, and the car sleeps in the hotel car park. This is the address for families and for anyone here for the water. Our pages on Essaouira bay and the new town describe what surrounds it.

The medina next, with a handful of hotels inside the walls, often several houses knocked together around a lift. You keep the riad’s constraint, taxi to the gate and bags carried in, and you gain a reception open at night. Our view: a medina hotel beats a riad when someone struggles with stairs, and loses on everything else.

The forest last, south of the bay, between the dunes, the golf course and the village of Diabat. Its hotels are 6 km from Bab Doukkala by road. These are resorts with large pools and nothing within walking distance. Every evening in town means a taxi, about ten minutes each way by our calculation. They suit golfers and a family that does not plan to eat in the medina every night.

What a hotel gives you, and what it costs you in town

Parking is the first argument: a car outside the room spares you the guarded car parks at the gates and the walk with the bags. The pool is the second, and here it is worth more as shelter from the wind than as a swim. Ask whether it is heated. The third is the room for four, connecting or family, almost unknown in a riad.

For gear, ask three questions before you pay: a locked room for the kite, a tap to rinse with, somewhere to dry the wetsuit. A balcony is enough for the wetsuit and not for the kite. Our surf and kite camps settle those three questions inside the price, and our apartments in the new town settle them by the month.

What you lose: the roof terrace, breakfast in the courtyard, the souks a hundred metres away. Every dinner in the medina is a walk along the boulevard, and the walk back is into the wind. Take the hotel for the logistics, never for the charm.

Sea view or poolside: a question of season

On this coast, “sea view” means “facing the wind” for six months of the year. From April to September the trade wind takes the ocean-facing balconies from late morning. From October to March the wind drops and a sea view becomes a balcony again. Our rule: sea view in winter, poolside or courtyard in summer, and a high floor in both cases, because of the boulevard. Our neighbourhoods pages say how far you sleep from what.

Stars and taxes: what the advertised price leaves out

The stars are an official classification. Bulletin officiel no. 7407 bis of 27 May 2025 carries implementing orders for law 80-14 on that classification. The Ministry of Tourism announced five of them on 10 June 2025 and allows 24 months to comply. Until then, judge by the bathroom photograph, not by the number.

Two taxes are often added to the night, per person: the taxe de séjour, set by the municipality, and the taxe de promotion touristique. We have not found their Essaouira rates in any official text. They are rarely in the price quoted online: ask for them when you book.