Riad Les Cigognes

The first impression was wonderful. The entrance looked magnificent, the atmosphere was charming, and the location near the Jewish quarter was interesting. The service staff were kind. We knew not everything in a hotel would be perfect: breakfast service was irritatingly slow and inadequate, our dinner at Dar Les Cigognes was poorly prepared, ants and other critters got into the bathroom of our otherwise nice room, and the air conditioning was terribly noisy. Those were all issues I could have set aside. What changed the whole experience was a theft and the management's response. We had two connecting rooms, one for us and one for our daughters. At night, we left the room doors open for supervision behind the beautiful Moroccan-style wooden doors. Someone managed to slip the hook on one of those doors and enter our room. I woke to a loud noise and called my daughters' names, thinking they were up. In the dark everything seemed fine, so I went back to sleep. In the morning, our bag on the armchair was open, with the bills plainly visible. When we counted, about €400 and 1,000 dirhams were missing. I won't dwell on what this means for guest safety, including that of our two little girls. I want to describe what happened when we quietly reported it the next morning: almost nothing. We got a few polite words, an offer to call the police, and a lot of disbelief. It felt as if the owner thought we'd invented it. We chose not to call the police because we know how these cases can go, unfortunately in Italy too: endless questions, losing a day of a four-day holiday, and little else to do without cameras. Neither my wife nor I raised our voices or lost patience, though perhaps we should have. We didn't ask for compensation. We expected some sensitivity, at least an expression of regret and understanding even if the property couldn't establish what happened. Hotel owners know there are professional complainers and people who make up problems or turn petty scams into an art, but we were treated as impostors. The owner didn't appear the next day when we checked out, and gave no instructions for an apology note, fruit basket, airport transfer, or small discount. None of those gestures could have made up for the money or the feeling of being unsafe, but they might have helped us feel that our concern mattered and that we were being treated as guests. Patience, losing 500€ won't spoil the beauty of our memories of Marrakech. But this one-star review is deserved, and other guests should know how little regard was shown to a decent family with children who trusted the property's professionalism instead of insisting on compensation. That was a mistake. And yes, I expect management to apologize if another guest reports a room theft by the same method, because I believe it will happen.