Travel Review: Luxury Tour of Spain & Morocco, Seville, Granada, Barcelona, Tangiers, Fez, Marrakesh

Working with this agent was overall a very positive experience.  He planned a very comprehensive itinerary which included Spain and Morocco.  The hotels he chose in Seville and Barcelona were in great locations, very comfortable and both had extremely warm, friendly, helpful staff.  He covered every detail including transportation to and from every point in the trip.  When we decided not to rent a car for day trips to Granada and Cordoba, he and his partner were responsive to our needs. For the Morocco portion of the trip, our agent arranged for us to take the ferry to Tangiers where we met our driver to take us to Fez and Morocco.  We immediately encountered a problem at the ferry where we were to get tickets (which were to have been prepaid) and were told we had to pay for the tickets.  After calling our agent on his emergency line, he corrected the problem, but all this created a stressful time as we almost missed the ferry.  Our agent also should have told us that there are no facilities in the port in Tangier and it was an hour before our driver stopped in a town for us to use facilities and get something to eat.  In addition, while we had an excellent driver, his English was very limited which made communication difficult.  The itinerary called for us to stop in Meknes with several sites to visit, however, by the time we finished lunch (which was a 45-minute stop), the driver told us it would be an almost 7-hour drive to Fez.  It was a grueling drive through winding mountain roads and we arrived (happily) at the beautiful 5-star hotel at 10 p.m.  While the guide we had in Fez was very knowlegeable, his agenda was to take us to coops where he would clearly get a cut in any deal we made.  We were extremely uncomfortable with the hard-sell approach in each shop. The hotel our agent selected in Marrakesh was supposed to be a 5-star hotel--in fact, it would barely be a 3-star hotel in Europe or the U.S.  The room offered to us was next to a maid's closet on the bottom floor, the hotel was dirty, the furniture worn.  We immediately called our agent, and he contacted the agent he works with in Morocco.  We went to two other hotels (all supposedly 5-star) snd finally settled on one because we were exhausted, we had been driving all day and relented.  We expressed our displeasure to our agent, and he told us that 5-star hotels in Morocco, were 4-star in Europe.  Not one of the hotels we were shown were comparable to any 4-star hotel we stayed at in Spain and at no time in all the months we worked with our agent did he tell us that.  We certainly would have paid whatever additional costs necessary to stay at a clean, upscale hotel. On a positive note, the guide we had in Marrakesh was wonderful; quite a difference from the guide in Fez.  While our overall experience with our agent was very positive, he clearly works with another agency in Morocco which is where we encountered problems.  We enjoyed every moment in Spain and wouldn't hesitate to recommend this agent for travel in his country.