Couldn’t have asked for a better holiday!!
Sep 2021 | hannahwU8255QK
So I’ll start by saying that this will be a very detailed review, but there is good reason for it! Hopefully it may also help someone else get a clear picture of the service and experience.
Initially, my friend and I had booked to stay at a different hotel through our chosen holiday provider, however, we were informed the day before departure that the original hotel had closed and that our stay had been transferred to Club Madina - I can’t stress enough how happy this change ended up making us!
Upon arrival, it was clear that our holiday operator hadn’t provided Club Madina with any notice, as our details weren’t in the system anywhere. This could have been an extremely stressful situation, however the reception staff and the hotel manager, Adil, sorted everything for us within an hour and had our room ready 2 hours earlier than the check in time - we had a drink at one of the bars whilst we waited. Our room was extremely easy to find as there is plentiful and clear signage all around the hotel and our bags were brought to our room within 5-10 minutes (please ensure to tip as these employees work extremely hard!). The grounds were absolutely beautiful and immaculately maintained in such a hot climate.
The room was spotless and smelled fresh, as well as having a lovely balcony and an authentic Moroccan feel to it. There was a mini fridge, a small hairdryer, towels (full size, hand towels and a bath mat which were replaced every day), hand soap and air conditioning. You would need to bring your own toiletries like shower gel and shampoo/conditioner, but that was a given for me as I always bring my own.
Our room was a short walk away from reception, the buffet restaurant and the 3 main pools, all of which were also spotless. There is a main pool where all of the entertainment and activities take place, a smaller, shallower pool to the left of it which has a volleyball net and regular volleyball games which was so fun. There is also a beautiful pool to the right of the main pool which was also shallow and had a beautiful fountain/water piece in the middle of it. For people that are all inclusive, the small, on-site water park is free. It is definitely very small with only 4 or 5 slides and not your traditional ‘European’ water park in the sense that there is a slight shortage of inflatables and there are no sun loungers around the slides only chairs facing them. However, the slides that are there are fun and we had a laugh on them. There is also another large pool at the other end of the waterpark which is lovely and is quieter than the main pools. It also has a good number of lovely sun beds and umbrellas.
The entertainment at the hotel was utterly brilliant and consistently so. There was entertainment and activities by and in the pool every day from around 10am and included a variety of things such as Aqua Zumba, aqua aerobics, pool parties, water polo, team games and dancing. There were also demonstrations of traditional Moroccan food and drink such as tagine and Moroccan tea, as well as traditional Moroccan dancers that would perform around the pool. The nighttime entertainment was just as good and although it was almost entirely in french, it doesn’t take away from the overall atmosphere and we actually picked up some french over our two week stay. The animation team is phenomenal and they really made our stay for us, as did the rest of the staff including the restaurant staff and the fantastic cleaning staff. The hotel is also extremely safe for children and families, there are security guards on shift constantly and the staff take the time to get to know you and all of the kids so you know they are safe.
From the animation team - Salah, Will, Zaineb, Abdel, Tony and Joe made particular impressions on us as they always made a specific effort to come and say hello and involve us in any activities and games. They also translated everything for us as their English was fantastic. There were also several other animation staff who were equally as good, but didn’t get to spend as much time with so can’t quite remember their names. Our cleaner was amazing and always went the extra mile to leave a special surprise.
The food was good overall, however there were the occasional meal time that we were disappointed with the lack of variety. The restaurant staff were fabulous, especially mustapha who ran the evening meal times, he always made a special effort for our table and is a credit to the hotel. At lunch time there is a good and light selection of food and there is an option to get food in a pool side bar and at a little station next to the restaurant outside of meal times.
There is an on-site nurse and infirmary which is overall good. We had a bit of a stomach bug on one of our last days which the nurse promptly treated with anti-sickness tablets which appeared to help. The service was quick and efficient and the only downside was that the nurse spoke no English whatsoever.
If you require a COVID test to return to a resident country at the time of your stay, I recommend researching somewhere in advance. We had our test done by the on-site medical staff (the same nurse and what appeared to be an on-call doctor) and in all honesty it was a nightmare. It was by far the worst part of the holiday and an anxious 32 hours! We had the COVID test booked for 11am on the Saturday (we travelled home Monday) and when we arrived, albeit 10 minutes early, the nurse was not there. We waited for nearly 40 minutes for her to arrive, by which point we had made our way to reception who phoned her. Despite her arrival, we had to wait a further 20 minutes for another woman (who we assume was a doctor) to arrive to carry out the test. We were unaware of the reason for the delay due to the language barrier, however the test was carried out and we paid. The price was 500 Moroccan Dirhams which was around £50 for a PCR. We counted the money in front of both the nurse and the doctor and we handed it over to the doctor who then also counted it. There was some discussion between the two women in Arabic, and we said thank you and left. We had been back in our room for about 5 minutes when there was a knock on the door which was the nurse and the doctor who proceeded to tell us that we had underpaid by 200 MAD (around £20). I was entirely taken aback by this and tried to translate as best we could that we without a doubt paid the full amount to them, that we counted it, they counted it and there was no problem. They continued to persist and kept insisting we had underpaid, at which point I went straight to reception and relayed the issue. The reception staff contacted the hotel manager who came to reception to help resolve the issue. By this time, the nurse and doctor had arrived at reception and Adil, the manager spoke to both members of staff. He resolved it promptly and effectively and was polite and friendly the whole time. I believe this reflects more on the two individual members of staff than the hotel as from the minute I raised my issue, the hotel dealt with it brilliantly. We were both told the results would take 24 hours which would take us to just under 24 hours before our departure time, and 12pm local time, however we did not get our results until 9pm the following night. The hotel however, realised how important these tests were and actually hand delivered them to us at our dinner table after specially locating us which I thought was a lovely touch. I just wanted to raise the whole scenario for general awareness.
The only other negative of our stay (and again this doesn’t reflect on the hotel at all) was that you couldn’t leave any form of inflatables such as lilos or beach balls unsupervised due to children and other adults just taking them and using them. We had bought one on our second day and within 6 hours it had been popped by kids. We just brushed it off and accepted it as our thoughts were they’re only kids and we should have been more cautious about leaving it near our sun beds. We then bought another two as we realised we both wanted one and at least once a day we had to ask random people to get off them, despite them being near our sun beds. We were then extra cautious and began leaving them under our sun beds so it was entirely clear they were ours. We returned from lunch on one of our last days (we’d been gone about half an hour) to find that both lilos had disappeared from our stuff and that a random child and a random adult couple had taken them, one of which were popped. At this point my friend asked them both to get off and the man from the adult couple began raising his voice at my friend. He then spat at her which appeared to go completely unreprimanded, however the hotel reception staff when reported appeared to take it seriously, and they also provided us with a new lilo. Again, just something to be aware of and didn’t detract from our overall stay and enjoyment.
Despite the minimal negative points, we had an absolutely superb time and we are actually planning to book our second stay with more people next august in the next few weeks we loved it that much. Fantastic staff team, beautiful and clean hotel and such a culture rich country, we couldn’t have asked for a better holiday. Thank you so much, Club Madina!!
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