How expensive is Morocco?

Hello fellow budget hunters!

Most people who know me know how much I love a bargain! I buy all my clothes from charity shops and know exactly what time supermarkets near me reduce the food.. I’m down for a bargain!

So when we booked our tickets and trip to Morocco lots of people asked me how I could afford it?  Well I’ve put together a guide of the costs in Morocco and how much we spent! (This is based on a couple so may be different for you)

Firstly – Flights we spent £43 each on return flights through Ryanair (not affiliated but I should be the amount of flights I’ve taken with them!)  We flew at 6.10am from London Stansted and arrived in Marrakech at 10.15am. Sadly at this time of the morning the trains from Cambridge don’t run early enough for the recommended 2 hour window of security so we took the last train (£9.95 open return with 16-25 railcard) and camped out at the airport until security opened at 3.30am. If you don’t mind that situation it can get you very cheap flights!

Next we have accommodation so the first two nights we stayed in a hostel called Riad Dia which cost us £3.60 per person per night in a mixed 14 bed dorm. (5 euros or 50 dirhams) This wasn’t the cheapest hostel in Marrakech but it had great reviews and a good breakfast so we were happy! However we soon realised that it would cost us 6 or 7 euros each if we split a double room and gave us more privacy. In Essaouira we stayed in 2 different Riads that both cost £12 per night and £14 per night respectively but didn’t include breakfast but had ensuites.However these didn’t include the city tax which was 1 or 2 euros per night. We then stayed back in Marrakech in a very cheap £12 hotel which wasn’t particularly great and had an interesting ‘ensuite’ connected by a shower curtain so I wouldn’t recommend riad 63 for more than a night, everywhere else we stayed was lovely and no different from the 40 euro per night riads. All together we spent around £50 each on hotels and hostels!

Another cost was transport which we already spent £9.95 each in the UK (well my partner paid twice because he collected his tickets early then forgot to bring them with him!). We also bought a return ticket from the airport to central Marrakech which was 50 dirhams each (5 euros or £3.60 at the time). We also paid 150 dirhams for our return bus tickets to Essaouira (15 euros or £10.80) and that was it for transport.

A big cost of ours was the trip to Zagora which was a 2 day 1 night trip to the Sahara desert (more about it on the Zagora blog post) we got the price down to 55 euros (£46) each and were happy as it included food and transport. If you’ve read the post you will understand we ended up paying another 170 dirhams for expensive food and trips we didn’t want! (£13.50 at the time) 

Finally the other expense for visiting Morocco is FOOD. I am a massive foodie so was very excited to try Moroccan food, although pre warning there isn’t a huge variety – its mainly tagine/cous cous/ kebabs or panini style sandwiches. Without individually working out the cost of every meal we generally spent 50 dirhams each for a main meal around 30 for lunch and 10 for breakfast. We also had to buy water as you can’t drink the tap water in Morocco! We decided to buy a few 2 litre bottles for 6-8 dirhams each and then buy 5 litres for 12 and keep them filled up. We did this a lot but I doubt we spent more than 100 each during the whole 10 days. So I think we spent about 80 euros (£68) for food each during our 10 days in Morocco which could have been done cheaper but we decided to treat ourselves and eat where the locals did.

So if you can do the maths there you will realise that we spent… £244.85 each during our time there. Everything was done in cash so this is a rough guide of the exchange rates but I hope this gives you an insight on roughly how much you would expect to spend for 10 day in Morocco.