Surviving seven nights at this terrible hotel was an achievement in itself - Maybeme. Date of travel: Oct 2007
The Hotel Sidi Harazem is built alongside the natural water spring of the same name. I believe the hotel was built in the 1970s and from our stay it seems it has not been renovated since. The plaster is coming off many of the walls, the wood door frames are rotting, the swimming pool and surrounding grounds are literally crumbling. As this hotel is situated some 20km from Fez itself, we assumed it would be a quieter, more relaxing affair than staying at a centrally based hotel. Unfortunately we were wrong. There is a music club not 50 metres from the hotel which hosts live acts playing non stop tradition music (with unpleasant vocal arrangements) at breathtakingly loud volumes every single day from 4pm to 7pm. If you were hoping to grab an afternoon nap or quiet day by the pool you can forget it. I cannot over emphasise the volume of this music, we had to shout to be heard over it in our room. After the club closes and the band pack up, there is a short 10 minute or so break before the 'lounge act' (I dare not write 'entertainment') starts up in the hotel. This is a fellow at a keyboard playing exactly the same traditional music with vocals only slightly worse than the club. This too can be heard from any room in the hotel and goes on until 1am every single day. This hotel is on the main tour route and it is very clear that nearly all it's income is from 1 night stopovers from these tours. The location can also be a pain as the bus to central Fez is once an hour during the week, it's cheap and reliable but dirty, noisy and takes 30 minutes. A taxi will cost you 150DH which will eat into your budget if you have to do this twice a day every day. The other thing to note is that the last bus from Fez is at 6pm so a taxi is your only option if you wanted to eat out, or spend the evening in town. We did not eat lunch or dinner at the hotel restaurant as its prices were at least twice that of everywhere else (obvious business I suppose with such a remote location). The staff we encountered were mostly pleasant except one reception guy who became aggressive in tone when I was making an external phone call for some reason. One porter would not leave us before he got a tip even though I had to carry all our own luggage. No one at the hotel speaks English, which can be problematic if your French is no better than Tricolor Book 3 from your GSCEs. Unless of course you are fluent in Arabic. The pool and grounds could have been so lovely, and probably were about 30 years ago, but have been left in such disrepair they are hardly worth looking around. As the hotel is geared so much towards the overnight stays of official tours the gate to the pool and grounds is actually kept locked all the time and you have to ask for the keys to get in. The rooms are also unclean and the bedsheets in our rooms were hardly ever changed. Although beds were made up it was obvious that the sheets had not been changed and I can only dread how many different people from tours go through before the washing is done. There were cockroaches and other interesting bugs in our bedroom and bathroom, which gave my wife plenty of shrieking practice. The one pleasant thing this hotel has to offer is its views of the mountains which are lovely. However the calming effect of this only lasts until the music strikes up and the reality sets in, any more than 1 night at this hotel will drive you to despair. We spent 7 nights here and it was a very harsh lesson, very well learned.