A local team, not a booking platform

What we actually are

Morocco Desert Expeditions is a licensed Moroccan tour operator with two bases: Marrakech, where trips are planned and most of them begin, and Ouarzazate, on the desert road, where our drivers and vehicles are kept. Every trip on this site is operated by us: our vehicles, our driver-guides, camps and hotels we have used for years and been to ourselves.

The Ouarzazate side matters more than it sounds. It is four hours south of Marrakech and on the far side of the Atlas, which means a vehicle can reach the gorges, Aït Ben Haddou or the Draa valley without first crossing the mountains. If something goes wrong on the desert road — a puncture, a closed pass, a guest who needs to come back early — help starts from Ouarzazate, not from the other side of the Tizi n'Tichka.

That matters because a great deal of what is sold online as a “Morocco desert tour” is a listing on a marketplace, resold two or three times before it reaches a driver who has never heard of you and is being paid a fraction of what you spent. You cannot tell from the website. What you can do is ask who will actually be driving, and whether you can change the plan on day two. We can answer both.

How we work

Everything is private. We do not pool bookings. If you book a three-day tour for two people, two people go. That is why our prices sit above the shared-minibus operators, and it is the whole reason the itinerary can move when you want it to.

We plan before we quote. Tell us your dates, how many you are and what you care about, and you will get a day-by-day plan rather than a brochure and a price. If what you want is not on this site, say so — most of what we run is not.

We answer quickly. Usually within a few hours, every day of the week. If you would rather talk, call us or message on WhatsApp.

What we will not do

We will not tell you the Agafay is the Sahara. It is a stone plateau forty minutes from Marrakech and it is beautiful, but it has no dunes. The photographs some operators use for it were taken 550 km away. We say which is which on the page comparing them.

We will not sell you a two-day trip to Merzouga. It cannot be done properly. If two days is what you have, we will send you to Zagora and explain the difference.

We will not run the commission-shop circuit. Many tours build in long stops at carpet dealers and “cooperatives” that pay the driver a cut. We stop at one argan cooperative because it is genuinely interesting and takes twenty minutes, and nobody is obliged to buy anything, anywhere.

We will not publish reviews we did not receive. Our reviews page points you at our TripAdvisor listing — a platform we cannot edit — rather than showing you testimonials we typed ourselves. The listing is filed under Ouarzazate, because that is where it was first registered; it is the same company.

Responsible bits, briefly

Our drivers and guides are local, employed year-round rather than seasonally, and paid a fixed wage that does not depend on getting you into shops. The camps we use employ people from Merzouga and Khamlia. When we visit nomad families we pay for the hospitality rather than treating it as a photo opportunity, and when the families are not within reach we say so instead of staging a substitute.

Talk to us

+212 662 766 030
moroccodesertexpedition@gmail.com
Open every day, 8am to 8pm (GMT+1)

• Marrakech office — Gueliz, Marrakech. Where trips are planned and most tours begin.
• Ouarzazate office — Avenue Mohammed V, Ouarzazate. On the desert road, where our drivers and vehicles are based.