Marrakech (Morocco) > Reviews > Flying Carpets Anyone?

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money	Poor
Shopping	Good
Nightlife	Average
Ease of getting around	Poor
Family Friendly	Poor

Advantages:	It will be pretty when fully built
Disadvantages:	No information given at all

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I flew out to Marrakech on a Wednesday and returned on the Sunday, both flights were quite early and with no time difference, meant I landed at reasonable times due to the flight time being only around three hours from Gatwick.

I spent the holiday relaxing by the pool and sunbathing so I can't comment on Marrakech "The Place", what I do want to review is the airport.

When we landed, we walked a short distance from the plane to the terminal - fair enough. Everything was well signposted and we easily made it to the cash point and taxi rank. It looked a bit empty and un-pretty. This was mainly due to the fact that they are building new terminals at the moment so this can be forgiven.

It was the departure to come back home that I feel I need to warn potential travellers about. As we approached the airport's exit/entrance I noticed the lovely pattern on the windows that will make the airport a stunning sight to behold when it's finished. Signs clearly indicate where the depature room is (the opposite side to where we had exited with our bags!) so we headed there. Upon which we were greeted with a massive departure lounge filled with people. It was one of the most daunting aspects of our entire holiday.

There were a couple of monitors detailing the flights about to leave and their terminal number, which obviously was 1 as there is only one. The biggest downside was that unlike other airports where these monitors also annouce the gate you need to check in at, Marrakech's had nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Logically, we glanced over at the gates to see if their individual monitors held any information. Nope. Just advertising. Although some gates did have paper stuck on them with flight number and destination airport code, which is only 100% useful when you know that Gatwick is LGW. But if you were heading to Milan, is that MXP?

We had got to the airport 2 hours before check in after being informed that Marrakech does not follow the same check in rules as Gatwick (ie. 3 hour check in). However, half an hour prior to our flight taking off there was still no information about which gate to check in through.

Eventually, fearing that the plane would leave without announcing itself or calling for us (or having it all done in French only despite it going to Britain) we approached a random gate who checked us in with no problem. Somehow I did not even fear that my bags would end up on the wrong plane. Oddly, I had faith!

After going through the metal detector which is separated into male and female lines despite the many men who could not distinguish between the picture of a woman and man. Then it was time to queue for passport checks. Finally with maybe twenty minutes before take off, we got to the boarding gates. Despite the early hour, the shops were open and I stocked up on my alcohol.

Again, up here the monitors only told the terminal and not which of the 8 gates you needed to be at. On the plus side, they were all close together. We had been hanging around for a maybe five minutes when someone announced what sounded like Munich. We decided they had said Gatwick, as there was no Munich on the board (although there was still a flight that was supposed to have taken off an hour prior!). We queued, asked the man if it was for Gatwick, he took our tickets and waved us through. I had slight concerns that we were getting on the wrong plane.

I'd also suggest taking your own food for the plane as all items were priced in Dirhams and Sterling, but I think they made it up as they went along and nothing had a set price.

My reccomendation: keep very very alert and ask people of authority. Don't expect to have the information handed to you, they probably won't leave without you as they kept on about an 0605 flight until after 0615, but you don't want to risk it. Maybe it's only because of the building work and there are hiccups. I sure hope they fix the problems otherwise I'll be buying a magic carpet next time and flying myself home!