This episode also has a video version on our YouTube channel, you can find it here: How Discount Tours in Morocco End Up Costing You 3X More (Or Worse),
or stay here for the audio version - your choice!
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Our good friend Siham (Ep. 24) returns to continue the discussion with Azdean and Sam from Ep. 62 (May 15, 2024) about dangerous scams and unseemly tourism practices in Morocco.
This time, the topic is discount "tour operators," the type you see in the Jemma el-Fnaa square in Marrakech (or seemingly on every street corner and cubbyhole), offering "$80 tours to Merzouga Desert" or "$20 to visit Aït Benhaddou." Impossibly cheap prices, yet tantalizing as a result.
As has been said, "We hear a story too go to be true - it ain't."
You might be wondering therefore what exactly comes with one of these tours, do they even go to the destination at all? How could they possibly advertise transport, breakfast and accommodation for that price? What actually happens when you sign up?
Well, Siham did us a solid and went on one of these tours to Merzouga, posing as a regular "tourist," to find out.
She tells us about:
- Having to pay extra for AC in a hot van,
- Being pressured to buy "mandatory Sahara scarves" for the desert,
- Hearing "Guide included," but it's not the guide who ends up meeting you, for whom you then have to pay,
- Sharing a room with other travellers, because the tour wasn't advertised as "private rooms,"
- Visiting a Berber "house" that turns out to be a rug shop,
and much more.
Imagine, you're stuck in the middle of the desert, without any other options: no grocery store, no alternate accommodation, no other transport out. They've got you trapped, and that $80 price is suddenly a faint memory.
Even for more substantial, multi-day tours, Azdean has a story of what starts as an $800 fee then turns into $2800 in expenses once all is said and done.
Tune in to this episode for not just valuable information and some head-shaking examples, but how you can be sure to avoid any of this happening to you!
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