One of the things you want to do in Morocco is a Sahara trip. We did a 3 day tour and you can read here about day 1, day 2 and day 3 of this tour. While you can book your Sahara trip already online in advance it is much better to book it in Morocco itself. If you book it in Morocco you will 1) save loads of money and 2) you can check if you trust the agency you book it with.
How to start?
The easiest places to book such a trip are Marrakesh and Féz. We booked it in Marrakesh. What we did was first to explore the Medina in Marrakesh. During our exploration we passed loads of small booking offices that provide those trips. It will give you a good idea what the offer is of a package and about the prices.The start price for a 3 day
Sahara tour from Marrakesh and ending in Marrakesh is as follows:
- .د.م700 per person for a standard group trip
- .د.م 3000 per person for a standard private trip
From there you can start your negotiations. You are able to bring the price down or add extra’s to your trip, for example a more luxury sleeping place or a private room. We got for example in the end a private trip for .د.م 2300 per person. I must admit that the original plan was that we would go with 2 other Italian people, but one of them got sick in the end so that is why we got a completely private trip.
The Medina in Marrakesh
Booking agencies in Marrakesh
We went through quiet some booking agencies and here are their names and my impressions with them:
- Saghro Experience Company
They are pushy. They are really trying to sell you a trip but when you ask specific questions about the area they don’t have any idea what you are asking them. So no local knowledge and purely sales minded.
- Travel Agency Rue Bab Agnou Gallerie El Qoads
Quiet standard travel agency. Mainly focused on group tours. They will sell the standard package but some personal preferences can be arranged. You can arrange for example a berber pizza for lunch in advance while normally you don’t have berber pizza with group tours.
- Morocco Travel Packages
Mohammed and Zaid are two brothers that are originally berber. They are from that area and have local knowledge. Perfect for your private tour because one of them will be your driver.
However we read some terrible reviews from people that choose from a group tour. The problem is with group tours all booking agencies will put those people together with a driver and you will drive a standard route with timings, you can’t have any influence on this.
Our choice
Our choice was in the end Morocco Travel Packages. During our talks we discovered you will see way more with a private tour and you will not stop and standard tourist places where there is nothing to do besides some tourist shops. Besides that with a private tour you will visit places such as some Kasbahs that you will not visit in a group tour.
Due to this reason, and because Morocco Travel Packages seemed to have some good local knowledge of the area we choose for them.
Finally
All the best with booking your Sahara trip. It will be an amazing experience. The best thing is just visit different tour agencies in Morocco itself, find the one that you feel the most comfortable with and negotiate a lot on the price. You can save a lot of money by doing that. We saved € 70,- per person basically.
