Even within the low season there are 450 immaculately turned out members of workers on the Royal Mansour on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast. They pander to the wants of the visitors housed in simply 55 suites and villas and put on, by my reckoning, 17 distinct kinds of uniform.
The butlers have crisp beige fits, the waiters inexperienced silk blouses, and the person who drives the bags cart dazzles in a shiny pink uniform with matching cap. There are particular outfits, largely in understated colors, for the concierge workers, the engineers, the assorted ranks of housekeepers, in addition to for individuals who ship room service.
The thriller is: the place are all of them hiding? You may stroll alongside the attractive sandy seaside choosing up vibrant-coloured shells, or cycle alongside the swept paths via the resort’s beautiful manicured gardens, and assume your self nearly alone. Just a few greeters and gardeners (in their very own rustic outfits) are dotted about, however there’s nobody shuttling between the foyer and the sand-coloured villas. Even the non-public butlers seem like invisible, popping up as if by magic solely when their discreet companies are required.
It is just later that I resolve the riddle of the disappearing workers. Beneath the resort complicated is a secret community of tunnels. Out of sight and out of earshot, members of workers flit alongside in autos beneath the floor, rising in devoted lifts to ship champagne and trays of Moroccan sweets, to plump pillows and to rearrange the poolside towels just-so. It’s not a lot upstairs-downstairs as overground-underground.
Whether it is service match for a king, that’s no coincidence. The resort is owned by Mohammed VI, Morocco’s monarch since 1999. In 2010 he opened the Royal Mansour in Marrakech — a no-expense-spared celebration of Moroccan craftsmanship, newly constructed however with swathes of intricate zellij mosaics and conventional hand-sculpted plasterwork. Relatively than rooms, its visitors keep in their very own non-public riads, organized in a type of simulacrum of the medina. Some guests have discovered an eeriness in the best way the actual metropolis’s color and chaos have been substituted for jasmine-scented silence, however the resort has been successful, drawing a string of celebrities and commanding room charges that hardly ever dip under £1,300 per night time.
In April this yr a second Royal Mansour opened, a marble-lined tower within the nation’s financial and monetary hub, Casablanca. And now the royal resort group has launched its first seaside resort, right here at Tamuda Bay. The king is unlikely really to remain — he has a somewhat good beachside pad-cum-palace proper subsequent door — however associates and members of his prolonged household have been apparently frequent guests within the run-up to the official opening final month.
If the actions of the workers are a well-kept secret so, in its method, is Morocco’s Mediterranean coast, not less than outdoors the dominion. With the Rif mountains arcing within the background, it extends for nearly 400km, from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta all the best way to the Algerian border within the east.
Although the Atlantic coast, and cities corresponding to Essaouira, Agadir, Oualidia and Taghazout, are higher identified internationally, the stretch of Mediterranean shoreline across the Royal Mansour and the little city of M’diq seems to be the place the nation’s jet-set spend their summers, consuming the native sardines in beachside eating places and feeding the wild boars which come down from the wooded hillsides.
By October, once I go to, the king and his retinue have moved on, the boars are gone and the hullabaloo has quelled. But the temperature continues to be a wonderful 27 levels and the sky and ocean — not less than throughout my keep — are unbelievable shades of uninterrupted blue. Solely a three-hour flight from London, plus a 90-minute drive from Tangier airport within the resort’s electrical automotive, it makes for a viable winter getaway (particularly given charges stay far under these of the Marrakech property).
I arrive at night time and am golf-carted to my room. The resort’s complicated stretches a great half-mile alongside a large non-public seaside of high quality sand. Within the morning, the ocean is a leisurely 60-second stroll away, assuming one will not be waylaid by the swimming pool.
A collection of low-rise buildings every home between 4 and eight suites; the seven villas are unfold out for seclusion with their seaside space additional hidden by sand dunes. If strolling to the principle foyer appears too far, visitors can go by golf-cart (courtesy of the person in pink) or cycle. Wherever you abandon your bike, it mysteriously winds up subsequent to your suite once more, as if delivered by invisible pixies.
Although the decor is opulent, the tile work and woven carpets are in muted, somewhat soothing, colors. Within the day, the sunshine in opposition to the crisp traces of the resort buildings’ partitions has a stark, David Hockney high quality. Because the solar units, the blues and beiges blur into the ocean, the sand and the purplish night time air.
The resort has a number of eating places (together with one Spanish, one French and one Italian) and an enormous spa on two flooring providing each therapeutic and hedonistic remedies. Kids are welcome. These aged 4 to 12 may be deposited in a youngsters membership, virtually as tastefully embellished because the grownup quarters, the place they’re entertained, based on the resort bumf, with calligraphy, music and cooking classes — and little question with video video games and cartoons when their dad and mom’ backs are turned.
At some point, I take a tour to the close by walled metropolis of Tétouan, a 25-minute drive away and about 40km south of the Strait of Gibraltar. House to about 380,000 and a medina that could be a Unesco World Heritage Website, it’s an sudden gem. Within the second century BC, the area’s first inhabitants traded with Phoenicians and have been later colonised by Romans and Berbers, however the metropolis’s trendy historical past started within the fifteenth century when it was settled by Muslims and Jews from Andalusia. When the final Moriscos have been expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614, many got here to Tétouan, which is typically often known as “Granada’s daughter”. In 1913, it grew to become the capital of the Spanish Protectorate of northern Morocco, which lasted a bit over 40 years.
At the moment it’s a nice place to stroll round, a curious mixture of artwork deco in eye-dazzling white, heavy Andalusian doorways and Moroccan riads, with their courtyard gardens. Spanish cafés promoting bocadillos and robust black espresso sit facet by facet with shops providing candy muffins and syrupy mint tea. The maze-like medina, with its Jewish and Muslim quarters, is a mini-Marrakech, arguably extra attention-grabbing as a result of much less touristic.
Morocco is beginning to market the Mediterranean coast overseas and several other grand resorts have opened on this stretch of shoreline, together with the St Regis and the Ritz-Carlton. But when your concept of luxurious is an invisible retinue of underground workers and a monarch as an occasional subsequent door neighbour, then there may be most likely just one alternative.
David Pilling is the FT’s Africa editor
Particulars
David Pilling was a visitor of the Royal Mansour Tamuda Bay (royalmansour.com), the place double rooms begin from Dh4,500 (£350) per night time; villas sleeping seven value from Dh52,000 per night time. There are direct flights to Tangier from quite a few European cities, together with London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels and Rome
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