How much does Marrakech cost with Kids: What Our Family Spent over 3 days
- minna
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Morocco has been one of our favourite places that we visited our toddler and we made this into a seven day road trip you can read about here: 7-Day Morocco Family Itinerary & Road Trip with Kids. We spent three days in Marrakech and there are plenty of fascinating sights and historical attractions to visit to keep your family entertained. Accommodation is probably where you can spend the most money but there are a range of options from budget all the way to luxury.
You can read more about our recommended places to stay here: Where to Stay in Marrakech with Kids: 10 Family-Friendly Hotels and Riads
Across our three days in Marrakech, we spent 5,479 MAD (roughly £435) as a family of three on accommodation, food and attractions, which works out at around £145 a day. We then added on an extra night in the Agafay Desert, bringing the total for the full trip to 8,825 MAD (roughly £700).
Because we were doing a road trip, we also hired a car and headed to Agayfay desert and stayed the night at Pearl Camp Agafay for a glamping experience. This was one of our family highlights but if you’re tight on time, this could be done as a day trip from Marrakech.
For our 3 day itinerary in Marrakech including our visit to Agafay read here:
Flights
Flights to Marrakech from the UK on average cost £100-200 pounds return per person but because we have the BA American Express and used our 2-for-1 companion voucher so our flights cost only £3 plus some Avios points! If you don’t have one of these credit cards already use my signup link and get started with some bonus points for us both.
Apply here: British Airways American Express® Credit Card
Accommodation
Budget (£50–£70/night)
At this end you're looking at smaller riads, often three to six rooms, with a courtyard and rooftop but fewer facilities. We stayed at Riad Saba for our first two nights, a short walk from Bahia Palace which we found really cosy with friendly and helpful staff. Riad Zehar & Spa has interconnecting rooms with separate bathrooms, which gives everyone a bit of breathing room without paying suite prices, and cots are available on request.
Midrange (£70–£150/night)
This tier gets you a bit more space, a hammam or spa on site, or a pool with a proper garden setting. We moved to Riad Samsli for our final night, which has an on-site hammam and spa plus cots on request. Riad Soundouss is the highest-rated small riad in the city, with a family suite properly sized for parents and young children, a children's menu at dinner, free cots, and under 3s stay free.
Luxury (£150+/night)
For a proper splurge, Dar Darma is an 18th-century mansion with a rooftop plunge pool looking out to the Atlas Mountains. The rooms here are really stunning and for families they have cots and rollaway beds so you can all sleep comfortably. Les Jardins de la Médina (only ages 4 and up) has a 16 metre heated pool in gardens that once featured in a BBC documentary. There are also interconnecting rooms on request, which makes it fun for larger groups and families staying together. At the very top end, La Sultana Marrakech has beautiful interiors (below) that make you fall in love with the place. For families there is also babysitting available, so you can actually book that spa treatment or enjoy a child free dinner once your kid is down for the night!
For the full breakdown across all ten properties, read our guide: Where to Stay in Marrakech with Kids.
Food
Across our three days, lunch came to 730 MAD in total (roughly £58), and dinner came to 1,040 MAD (roughly £83), with snacks and drinks adding another 84 MAD (roughly £7). That's 1,854 MAD in total for food across the trip, or around £147 for the three of us.
Averaged out, that works out at roughly 618 MAD (£49) a day for meals and snacks for the three of us, and it got cheaper the further we ate from Jemaa el-Fnaa. We ate once at the main square and as you'd expect it's an obvious tourist trap: the stalls are all pretty much identical and they stand outside each restaurant calling you in so you know you’re somewhere touristy. But worst of all the food was bland and the portions were small so I would avoid for a meal, especially with kids, as it's so hectic.
Activities and attractions
Fortunately many of the attractions in Marrakech quite cheap and often kids enter for free meaning you can see quite a lot of the main attractions without spending too much money however we found that the costs for all of these tickets do add up so you don’t need to visit them all. When visiting with kids it’s worth remembering that these destinations are quite popular and some of them have lots of steps so my recommendation is to book tickets in advance and get there early so you don’t end up queueing for ages and have more space to explore with kids.
Ben Youssef Madrasa: 100 MAD/adult, free for young children.
Le Jardin Secret: 200 MAD total (100 MAD/adult), free under 12
Bahia Palace: 200 MAD total, free for our daughter
Saadian Tombs: 200 MAD total
Le Jardin Majorelle: 360 MAD total
Or if you don't want to queue here are a few tours with skip the line entry:
Extending to Agafay Desert
If you can’t make it all the way to the Sahara but still want a desert experience then Agafay is your best bet. It’s about an hour outside of Marrakech and there are plenty of desert camping experiences on offer. It can be done as a day trip or an overnight but I would recommend staying the night with your family because there’s nothing quite like getting back from a camel sunset ride and having a traditional Moroccan dinner with entertainment followed by lighting a fire outside your desert glamping tent and looking up into the starry night knowing you’ve escaped the hustle and bustle of Marrakech. However not all the experiences are the same and looking at reviews of other places the food, entertainment and how welcoming they are to families varies greatly.
Desert camp accommodation: 1800 MAD (£143) for the night
Camel ride at sunset: 600 MAD (£48) for the three of us
Car hire: 246 MAD (£20) per day
Food: 710 MAD (£56) across lunch and dinner
Agafay night total: 3346 MAD / £266
I would definitely recommend Pearl Camp Agafay and you can read the full review here: Toddler Glamping in the Agafay Desert: Review of Agafay Pearl Camp, a Family-Friendly Oasis Near Marrakech
What we'd change
1. We went with mid-range and budget accommodation options which we really enjoyed but looking at the different options available in mid-range and luxury it's pretty good value for money for quite significant upgrade, so if we went again I would actually increase our budget for somewhere a bit nicer.
2. Eat away from Jemaa el-Fnaa entirely rather than just nearby. The further you get from the main Square generally the better the quality of the food.
3. If you’re really tight on budgets or time then skip Agafay but this desert camping experience was one of our highlights of the trip and my daughter still talks about the camel ride to this day so if you can make it work, I definitely would recommend it.
Was it worth it?
Absolutely, my daughter loved the city and it’s a really vibrant place with so much history and culture! It also suits different budgets and we didn’t go completely budget as we still wanted to be comfortable as a family. For roughly £145 a day across our three days in Marrakech, plus £266 for the extra night in Agafay, we came away with a trip that felt properly full, around £700 in total for the three of us across accommodation, food, attractions and the desert night. As I mentioned above, you can get significant upgrades on accommodation for a relatively small price increase.
