Apartment or private riad in Marrakech: what each one actually gives you

For two people, for three nights, a city apartment wins almost every time. You walk everywhere, you pay less, and you are not looking for a place, you are looking for a base.

From four people and a week up, a whole private house costs less a head and gives you something else entirely. That is where the question deserves to be asked seriously, including when the house sits outside the ramparts.

We rent a house outside the walls, so read this comparison knowing where it comes from. We have tried to make it useful even to people who will end up in the apartment.

The apartment, what it actually gives you

What it has going for it. The nightly price, the lowest of the three formats. The location: Gueliz, Hivernage, sometimes the medina, so restaurants and pavements on foot. A kitchen. And simple logistics, often with self check in by key box, which counts when you land at one in the morning.

What it does not have. An apartment is a block of flats. You have neighbours on the landing, party walls and a lift. On a stay with several people, that means lowering your voice after ten at night and passing strangers in a corridor.

It almost never has outdoor space of its own. When there is a pool, it is shared with the building, so it is busy at the hours you would want to use it, and rarely quiet.

And it usually has a single bathroom. That is the point you do not see when you book and the one that decides the mood of a stay for five: an hour and a half of lag every morning, and tension that builds by the third day.

The private riad, what it gives you

Private means the whole house is yours, not one bedroom inside it. Nobody else sleeps there, nobody else uses the sitting room or the pool.

What it has going for it. The space, which no apartment on the same budget gives you. In our case, three bedrooms each with its own shower room, a sitting room, a dining room, a full kitchen, a garden, a roof terrace and a pool four metres by two, for six people. The silence, because there is nobody above you. And a place with a character of its own: tadelakt, painted arches, reed ceilings, rugs bought locally.

What it costs. More a night, almost always. It is the price per person that turns the sum around, and only above a certain number.

Where the price per person tips

The reasoning, with no invented figures, because prices move with the dates and we publish none of them on this site.

An apartment is paid for by the property. For two, you divide by two. For five, you divide by five, but you are five in a one bedroom flat with one bathroom.

A medina riad is paid for by the bedroom, and breakfast by the person. Three bedrooms for six is three times the advertised price, plus six breakfasts a day.

A whole private house is paid for entire and divided by six. That is where the gap opens: the same amount that buys one riad bedroom buys the complete house.

To which the kitchen adds itself, and that line is underrated. With shops within walking distance, plenty of our guests eat at home most of the time. Over a week for six, the difference between cooking and eating out at every meal weighs more than the gap in the price of the accommodation.

The tipping point sits at around four people. Below that, the apartment wins almost every time. Above it, the whole house wins almost every time.

A point of physics nobody mentions

A patio pool, in the medina, does not warm up.

A riad patio is narrow and tall. The pool gets only a few hours of direct light a day, it is in shade the rest of the time, and it stays cold even in summer. That is very pleasant in July when it is 38 degrees outside. It is unusable in April and in October.

An open pool in an outdoor garden gets the sun all day. In Marrakech the window you can use without heating runs from late May to early October, against a far shorter season for a sunken patio.

This is not a sales argument, it is exposure. And it is the one thing a city apartment or a medina riad cannot give you, whatever the budget.

A point of honesty: our pool is not heated either. From November to April the water is cold, and we write that everywhere. Its best month of the year is September, when the air has come back down to 32 degrees and the water still holds the inertia of summer.

And the distance, then

That is the objection, and it is a fair one. We are ten kilometres from Jemaa el-Fna. Guests report between twelve and seventeen minutes by car depending on the hour.

What it really costs. A hire car, between 160 and 350 euros a week all in depending on your choices. A quarter of an hour of road on every outing. And no popping out for a bottle of water at midnight.

What it gives you. Across sixty-four reviews, not one mentions night time noise. It is the point that comes back most often, and it is also the one no Gueliz apartment can promise.

What we will not hide from you. The neighbourhood is working class and has not been tidied up for visitors: waste ground borders some of the streets. One of our guests wrote it plainly before adding that the people are kind and that the inside matches the photos exactly. It is the only score on our listing below 4.7: location sits at 4.6 out of 5, while cleanliness is at 4.8 and communication at 4.9.

That score does not bother us. It measures exactly the trade off described here, and it is fair.

The table, to settle it

Who each one is for

Take an apartment if there are two of you, if you are coming for three or four nights, if you do not want to drive, if budget is your first criterion, or if you are coming mainly for the city and the place you sleep is only a bed.

Take a medina riad if you want to push a studded door and stand in silence two metres from the racket, walk to the souks, walk home after dinner, and if the architecture matters as much as the comfort.

Take a private house outside the walls if there are four to six of you, if you are staying a week or more, if you are hiring a car anyway, if you are travelling with children who need to come back in the middle of the day, or if you have come looking for rest as much as for sightseeing.

What we really recommend

On a stay of a week or more, three nights in the medina then four in the green give you the best of both. You do the city properly while the energy is there, then you recover. Changing address costs an hour and a taxi fare.

Plenty of travellers do it the other way round, stay seven days in the same place in the medina, and go home more tired than when they left. Marrakech is an intense city. It takes measuring out.

If the second half of that stay appeals to you, our house is made exactly for it.