Every city offers you different options as far as accommodation, and the best choice is made on a combination of type, location, service and price. Here we will try and give you a basic overview of the four categories as they relate to Fes.

Overview

Figuring out the hotel scene in Fes presents several challenges. The first is the sytem of ratings. The second challenge is the amount of change. The third challenge is lack of quality information in English available on the internet.

Challenge 1: The Ratings

Hotels are ranked from 1 star to 5 stars. In addition to this, there are also non-classified hotels, which are completely legal, but didn’t meet the facility requirements of a 1 star hotel.

Now, there has been much lamenting over the failures of the hotel star system in recent years, with different countries using different standards and even in the same city, hotels with lower star value outperforming hotels with more stars. The star ratings also fail to take into account other things like ambiance and service. James Martin of About.com put it best in these comments on the star system,

“Think government ratings. Guido, a government pencil pusher for his whole life, goes into a hotel with a checklist. Is there a restaurant? Yes or No. Is there a toilet and shower/bath in every room? Yes or No. In the end there’s gonna be a count of all the yesses that will intimately bestow the hotel with some number of government stars. Don’t expect a qualitative review. Guido is about as likely to rate the ambiance or romantic qualities of the room as I am to sing Don Giovanni at the Milan Opera house dressed in a garter belt and silk stockings.”

In addition to the hotels there are the pensions, which are similar to hostels. These have no quality rating. Riads, which have been called “the pleasure of Fes,” have a rating system of first category and second category. This system is not well known and also suffers the same flaws as the star system. In addition to first category and second category, their are also non-official riads which operate illegaly.

Challenge 2: The Change

It is important to realize that the tourism landscape is changing a lot in Morocco. If you read an older version of a Morocco guide book, even from just five years ago,  much the information on the types of accommodation available will be inaccurate simply because of how much tourism is developing in Morocco.  For example, in Fes the capacity of tourist accommodations in 3,4,5 star hotels and riads grew by over 100% over the last seven years. In that same time, the accommodation capacity of 1 and 2 star hotels decreased by 60%.  So not only has there been a sizable shift in the number of accommodations available, but also in the level of those accommodations. The number of riads in Fes in the last three years went from having around 200 available beds to over 700 available beds in riads. So things are changing a lot, in a very short amount of time.

Challenge 3: Quality Info on the Internet

The third challenge to Fes hotels is finding good information on them on the internet. Many of the nicer riads and hotels have websites, but often times, because of the way they are made, they are hard to find in Google. Also, they don’t always offer the type of information you are looking for, and especially if you don’t speak French. Other accomodations have very little information at all on them available online.

In the last few years, Trip Advisor has become very popular and can often be a good source for information on Fes, but there have been many complaints about the authenticity of advice given there.

The Solution: (In Our Opinion)

We are ex-pats living in Morocco. We have lived here for a combined 11 years. We have traveled extensively in Morocco and experienced great treasures here and also frustration along the way. The best way to get good information on Fes hotels is to pull from a variety of sources. Current guidebooks give a good piece of the puzzle (we like the 2008 Frommers the best). Trip Advisor can give you some good input from people’s reviews. Riad Reviews has the best info on the specific details of a riad- like room size and amenities. Travel agents who regularly work Fes can set up a great trip for you. For Fes Hotels, we have tried to pull together information from all over- newspaper articles, awards, guidebook write ups, videos, pics- everything we could find- and put it in one place so that you can see all the information there is about the different hotels.

Having noted the challenges, here is a basic overview of accommodation considerations in Fes. Once you get the basic idea of what Fes has to offer, you can sort through the hotels here and the riads on Riad Reviews.

Accommodation Types

In Fes the following accommodation types exist: luxury hotels, midrange hotels, budget hotels/pensions (hostels) and riads.

• Luxury Hotels: Fes has a handful of luxury hotels in the four to five star range. The most famous of these is the Sofitel Palais Jamai, which Travel and Leisure named to their list of top 500 hotels in the world. In looking for a luxury hotel, it is important to note that the star level of a hotel in Morocco is awarded based on the presence of certain amenities, not intangible things like service or comfort. In the last several years the renovation of riads (like those found in Marrakech) has hit Fes. Among these riads, an entire market of luxury accommodations has developed that does not fall in the standard “star” system. There is a system of classification for riads, either first or second category, but the descriptors to be fit in these categories are fairly unhelpful for evaluating a riad. The best way to evaluate the “luxury” level of the riad is by the pictures, amenities and reviews that it gets.

• Midrange Hotels: Most of the midrange hotels are located in the Ville Nouvelle. Among these hotels, you can find those of moderate price, with good service and clean rooms. You would not stay in these hotels for the “experience” of the hotel, but they would serve your needs nicely as a launching out point in exploring Fes. Riads also exist at the midrange level with some starting between 60-70 pounds/65-75 Euros. At these riads you can expect the same things as their midrange hotel counterparts, except you will get more personal service and the riads have more charm.

• Budget Hotels/Pensions/Hostels: Everyone’s definition of “budget” is different. So for the sake of our discussion, we are saying that a budget hotel is one that you could get a double room in for about 16 pounds/20 euros a night or under. Fes has a series of 1 star hotels as well as “non-classified” hotels. Non-classified places are totally legal, but have no stars. Some of these are great inexpensive deals and some are not. Pensions are for all practical purposes, hostels.

Location

Fes is divided into three basic parts. The Ville Nouvelle (the New City), Fes Jdid (the New Fes), and Fes El-Bali (Old Fes). The city is arranged roughly like this:

Map of Fez

The Ville Nouvelle:
The Ville Nouvelle was built by the French. It is laid out in French colonial style, and has seen an overhaul in the last few years with in influx of trendy cafes. Many of the restaurants and mid range hotels are located here. Finding a meal, or a place to get tea of coffee is not problem.  And if you are looking for a great breakfast, the orange crossaints at Cafe Adan are where it is at. It takes about 30 minutes to walk to the medina from here, or is at the most about a 25 dirham cab ride. If you want to stay in a midrange hotel, or would rather return from the hubbub of the medina each day, this would be a great place to stay. You would have to factor in travel time and money to go back and forth from the medina, but cabs are abundant in Fes, run on a meter, and are a relatively inexpensive way to get around in the city.
Fes Jdid:
Fes Jdid, means the New Fes, but it is anything but new. Within Fes Jdid is the Mellah (Jewish Quarter) and the Fes Royal Palace. The Royal Palace takes up most of the area and is not open to the public. The Mellah has a few old synagogues and cemetery dedicated to the Jews who used to live in Fes.
Fes Al Bali (The Old Fes):
Fes Al Bali is the reason most tourists come to Fes, and most of Fes’s best attractions are located here. Fes Al Bali is located on the side of a hill and descends down into a valley. This area is very hilly and the lanes of the medina weave in and out. There are no cars allowed inside the walls. The riads and most of the pensions are found here. Many Fes visitors spend their entire holiday inside this area without ever leaving.

You enter and exit the medina at the various babs. The babs are the prime places to catch a taxi. The most famous of these is Bab Boujaloud which is located toward the top of the hill.   If you are wanting to go on day trips from Fes or wanting to see the new city, your proximity to a bab is important.  It takes about 30 minutes of focused walking to walk from the bottom of the medina (near the river) to the top (Bab Boujaloud) and it is a fairly hilly climb.

As far as eating or drinking, there are plenty of the typical Moroccan cafes, patisseries and the like sprinkled through the medina. Bab Boujaloud has series of restaurants where you can get a good meal as well.

Service:

Like all places, the service level varies from accommodation to accommodation. Language issues and cultural differences also affect the quality of service you receive. Wherever you go in Morocco it is always a good idea to ask the accommodation lots of questions if you have special needs. For example, in the cheapest of the Fes accommodations it is important to find out whether hot water is available, and are the showers inside the room or out. Other questions that are worth asking (if these things are important to you) are:

• Is there someone at the hotel that speaks a language I understand?- You won’t have a problem if you speak French or Arabic. Moroccans are becoming increasingly fluent in English and many hotels/riads can “get by” in several languages, but it is always a good idea to double check.

• Is there heating/air conditioning? Fes gets really cold in the winters and really hot in the summers. Not every place comes fitted heating or cooling. It’s also good to know who actually controls the heating and cooling. Is it within the room or at a hotel level?

• Do you supply towels?

• What forms of payment do you take? Not every place takes credit cards, so they might require cash. You can easily get cash from one of the Fes ATMs but you probably want to know that beforehand.

Price:

Price varies widely in Fes. You can do holiday for very cheap if you like, with some of the pensions costing as little as 5 Pounds/ 10 Euros a night. Or you can stay in places like Riad Al Kantara that cost 260 Pounds/290 Euros a night. Food varies in price just a widely from a lunch that costs 3 pounds to a dinner that costs 35 Pounds/40 Euros at Al Fassia Restaurant in Sofitel Palais Jamai. So unlike a lot of famous tourist cities, Fes can be done on really any budget.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 am and is filed under Travel Advice in Fes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.