Riad Elsagaya

Quite and nice. Breakfast included but same everyday.

Our first 2 nights were in Touaregs, a large, clean room, well worth the price, but a bit noisy. We left for a 3-day tour & then returned for a final night at the riad. Sindibad is a small 2nd-floor room that smelled of mold, but it was quieter. We changed our original reservation through hotels.com, but when we arrived we accidentally paid for an extra night. When we realized our mistake, we asked Barak for a refund. He said he "didn't get any email from hotels.com"; we provided the confirmation emails to show we had made the change in advance. Barak simply shrugged & never offered up a solution. Eventually I asked if we could have a dinner at the riad to compensate the overpayment. Thankfully Barak agreed. The evening prior to our tour, we asked Youssef if we should do anything to ensure we could have breakfast before we left at 8am. He said to just come downstairs whenever we were ready. At 7a no one was to be seen; at 730 we decided to go into the kitchen ourselves & found some bread & butter. The noise seemed to have woken Barack up. He didn't offer anything. We asked for some jam & juice, which was provided the prior morning. He replied with "breakfast service does not start until 8." We told him we had informed Youssef of the situation; he gave us the requested items. More customer service blunders ensued; we never asked for anything out of the ordinary. Barak's poor service was to the point where we'd recommend staying elsewhere to avoid the frustration.

nice area as long as you have gps on your phone to get back without exiting the area

It is amazing the fact that just behind the entrance door of the Riad the environment changes. The owner/manager was very helpful and friendly and took all the necessary time to inform us and guide us about the destination. I firmly recommend this property

A lovely quiet riad, quite a way out from the centre but that gives you a great walk through the souks to get there. Although the rooms are small, the rooftop terrace more than makes up for it, with lots of space to sit and relax.

Lovely building, confortable and clean rooms, very good service. However the surroundings are quite tricky.

I am by no way a fierce critic, and I would not normally bother to write a review but there were a few niggling things regarding this property that I feel I should make people aware. I visited in December and at night it gets cold, the rooms open directly to the open air courtyard there is no heating in the rooms and they charge you extra to rent a tiny electrical heater that I literally had to position next to my feet (fire risk) to keep to some level of warmth. The windows and doors to my room were hardly secure, more like wooden air vents and my lock was practically falling off. I had a lovely huge jacuzzi bath - It did not work and the hot water would only last to fill it about 3 inches! wifi did not work in the room, you have to go out to the courtyard to recieve reception and it is then very intermittent. You have to knock the door to come in from teh street there is no key to get in, sometimes you are waiting a very long time. I was advised it would be 6% extra to pay by credit/debit card, and this was a bank fee, not theirs. I accept this is as fine, but it should be made clear on the hotels.com website, the guy on reception did not seem to get this, when I suggested this! I did bring these issues up with them, no effort was made to remedy it, and no alternative room was offered with a better lock, It was only 2 nights so i thought I would just put up with it!

To find the hotel it's best to get a taxi and have a written note of the address as many taxi drivers were unaware of the location. Once there, it's a genuine oasis of calm in a pretty hectic and bustling neighbourhood of the Medina. It's only a short walk to the souks and Djeema El Fna, as well as Gueliz and the Majorelle Gardens. The staff were friendly and polite and although the group I was with spoke almost exclusively English, they were attentive and couldn't have done more to help. The owner does speak great English but with limited French and a little patience on both sides, you can easily understand/be understood by all staff. The rooms were really clean and comfortable and the Riad is a prime example of it's type. The roof terrace is a great place to catch some sun or relax with a quiet drink (bring your own) in the evening. It's worth remembering that this isn't a 5* hotel so the pool is pretty small and there are no TV's in the room but if you want to stay someplace authentic and in the heart of the Medina then I really couldn't recommend the hotel more highly.

First of all i've like to note that the fee noted at hotels.com isn't the fee you'll end up paying because the hotel will charge you with some extra taxes (somewhat 25 % of the price on hotels.com). Off course it's our problem as the buyer of such a stay to note the text with little letters, but i've never experienced such extra taxes before and found it disgracefull. The staff was nice enough, but not really good at english which would have helped a lot. When asked about what to see outside Marrakesh, which in itself is an absolutely horrible city which we're never going back to, we were just refered to some board with a small variety of tours which we found somewhat expensive and inadeccuate. We ask the hotel staff where they normale are going when then go for a picknick and with what kind of transport and so on, but again there just refered to the board. well, in the end we took a 2 day trip to the city Essaouri, which is a much nicer city, because we couldn't stand marrakesh any longer, but when we came back to this riad, someone had taken a s**t in our toilet and the s**t was actually still in the toilet and absolutely unflushably because of it's huge size! we ovbiously complained and got to change room for that last night. our room was the smallest of their rooms and it had no window, and even though we were the only guests in the riad we were not allowed to change room, only if we'd pay more. The aircondition in our room was airconditioning, it was just one of those propel-things, and it was half broken so it made a lot of noise which made it dificult to sleep. the breakfast was pretty standard, some morrocan pancakes, a bit a bread and some tea and juice - i guess it was fine. the riad in itself is nice, especially the court-yard with the small pool. But a minus is that the owner's son lives in the room just next to the pool and some off the days he had the telly going extremely loud while he himself was out taking a dip in the pool or resting in the courtyard - just a small annoyance, but it all adds up. Overall my view of the riad could be twisted a bit towards all the negatives because of the fact that my girlfriend and I absolutely hated marrakesh as a city. If you expect to find a cheaper and closer destination, as a european, than india - then don't. You'll end up questioning yourself why you like india, and that bracked of countries, but still dislike this one. even despite our resentment of the city I think that all the facts I've been able to add up about the riad makes it for a pretty bad review and I'll advice anyone who wants to go there to be aware of the extra charges they'll put on you.

Our first experience with the riad saw us waiting outside the airport for an hour, waiting for our pre-arranged pick-up. We were later told the man who had come to pick us up 'couldn't find us'.. so we were left to battle it out with the taxi drivers hovering around the arrivals area. However, once we got there, the riad itself was very nice inside - we had the smallest room on the second floor, but it was comfortable and clean. The bathroom had some major issues, including the floor flooding every time we showered, and the curtain separating the bedroom from the bathroom took some getting used to. The roof area was fantastic - a really good place to chill out away from the madness outside. Also loved the resident dog, tortoise and noisy finches. The riad ?receptionist was pleasant but didn't speak a lot of English. There were a few occasions where we weren't sure if he had simply miscommunicated himself, or had been relaxed with the truth, i.e. our excursion costing 100 dh more than agreed the night before, the drive taking three hours instead of one hour.... The only other staff we met was the cleaner, who was also friendly but spoke minimal English. Breakfast was good, although repetitive. The riad, being open, meant that you could always hear the noises of other guests, but this wasn't a big deal. Overall, it was good for the price, but not great.