Sofitel Thalassa Mogador, Essaouira

This was a good, solid choice of hotel, although not without its drawbacks. The hotel is, on the whole, as lovely as the photographs on the hotel's official website would suggest, although the photographs don't show the cracked tiles, dirty and damp cushions on the balcony, lights on the balcony not working or other small flaws. These flaws are not in themselves enough to put me off recommending this hotel as the rooms are generally well equipped ...
...hotel of its calibre.

The hotel is located right on the beach, although needless to say the hotel photographs don't make a particularly big deal about the main road running between the hotel and the beach. Whilst the view puts paid to any secluded sea-side view fantasies, there is so much life going on on the promenade that the beach-side balconies would provide an excellent people-watching vantage point. I stayed on the pool-side ... more

This was a good, solid choice of hotel, although not without its drawbacks. The hotel is, on the whole, as lovely as the photographs on the hotel's official website would suggest, although the photographs don't show the cracked tiles, dirty and damp cushions on the balcony, lights on the balcony not working or other small flaws. These flaws are not in themselves enough to put me off recommending this hotel as the rooms are generally well equipped and attractive, just that they are a shame in a hotel of its calibre.

The hotel is located right on the beach, although needless to say the hotel photographs don't make a particularly big deal about the main road running between the hotel and the beach. Whilst the view puts paid to any secluded sea-side view fantasies, there is so much life going on on the promenade that the beach-side balconies would provide an excellent people-watching vantage point. I stayed on the pool-side and felt that this was the more relaxing choice - I stayed in the hotel in September 2006 with my fiance after the school holidays had finished and the pool never seemed to have more than 4 or 5 people in it at most. Likewise, the sun loungers and even the hammocks never seemed to be too much in demand. Perhaps we were unlucky but sunbathing opportunities were fairly limited in the 10 days we were there - there was virtually no rain but the mist that affects the town can make sunbathing a bit of an endurance test for even a hardy Scottish type like myself! Despite this, having a private, monitored, section of beach is very welcome. This section is not, however, very large and does not go as far as the sea itself.

We only ate in the hotel a couple of times, mainly because it was so expensive compared to the myriad of places in the rest of the town. The food was of decent enough quality, but then again, so was the cheaper food elsewhere - it is only a 5-10 minute walk to the city walls. On the upside, you can get alcohol which can be a little difficult to obtain. Incidentally, a tip for if you want to buy your own alcohol for drinking in your room or on your balcony without paying hotel mark-ups - walk out to the main bus station by the city walls, walk to the end of the square, then follow the road up round by the city walls heading north - probably best not to do this carrying many valuables - and there is a little shop with some very polite owners serving a wide range of (surprisingly decent) Morroccan wines amongst other beverages. There may be other places to buy alcohol, but we spent quite a long time looking (apart from anything else, it's a great way to discover the town!) and that was the only place we found.

As regards the hotel's facilities, I would definitely recommend the spa. My fiance and I both had a number of different treatments, which were excellent and carried out in very relaxing surroundings. On the downside, none of the staff speak any English at all, and as my GCSE French doesn’t really stretch to describing different types of massage treatments, this meant a certain amount of guesswork was required - I would therefore suggest that unless you have a very good level of French (not necessary throughout the rest of the hotel as English is widely - if not fluently - spoken), and want to have a massage or other treatment, that you do your research on explaining what you want in French before you go.

The gym is basic, but functional.

The hotel offers a number of tours by local taxi - I would be very careful before going on these. The first of these was excellent if entirely random -the point was to visit an Argan oil co-operative in the Atlas foothills. So far, so interesting. Except our taxi driver, despite being very friendly, took a number of detours to visit his friends, buy some meat, along with a number of other chores, many of which took us to see parts of the area we would never otherwise have seen and were quite interesting. The only problem came when we tried to go to a vineyard which *was* on our itinerary - only to discover it had just closed and we'd missed it because we'd spent too long at the driver's brother's house looking at some water pumps. On a more serious note, though, another tour we took to Safi was in a car with a broken speedometer. Not the most relaxing of journeys!. I would therefore suggest that if you take a tour organised by the hotel that you make it clear where you want to go, possibly have a check of the car beforehand, and also check to see whether you are expected to pay for the driver's lunch (as we were on the second tour, including the lunch of his friend who joined us for the ride).

I stayed in this hotel in September 2006 when we paid £89 per night per room on an Opodo deal, which was the cheapest we could find at the time. Since then, the price appears to have increased substantially to £108 per night (this is also the cheapest on the hotel's own website). I have given this hotel a "good value" rating based on what we paid. Assuming that the cheapest rate now is £108 (of course there may be deals that I do not know about), I would downgrade this to average.

Overall, I would recommend this hotel, and you are unlikely to be disappointed with it if you choose to stay here. 

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