Somebody sent me a video this week titled "The Great Pyramid Is Pure MISERY!" — two days in Cairo, one horrible, one wonderful. Same city, same monuments, same week. The difference was entirely in how the days were set up.
I've been thinking about that because I film the places I go, and I was in Marrakech with a camera. Here is the medina, unedited, at walking pace:
That is the thing people are nervous about before they come. So let me be useful about it rather than romantic.
What the hassle actually is
It is not danger. Marrakech is a city where the overwhelming majority of people you meet are getting on with their lives and would rather you enjoyed yourself. What you get instead is commercial attention, and it takes three or four predictable forms:
- The faux guide: someone offers directions, walks with you, and then presents a bill. Often preceded by "that way is closed" or "the square is this way" — steering you toward a shop that pays commission.
- The thing placed in your hand. A henna brush, a monkey, a snake, a scarf. Once you're holding it, you're buying it. This is the single most reliable trick anywhere in the region.
- The unagreed price: the calèche, the taxi, the plate of food, the fez. Nothing is fixed until you fix it.
- The photograph. In Jemaa el-Fna, pointing a camera at a performer is a purchase. Fair enough, honestly — it's their livelihood.
Here's the square, which is where most of this concentrates:
What actually works
None of this requires being rude, and rudeness makes it worse.
- Don't stop walking to decline. Stopping is the opening of a negotiation. Keep moving, palm down, "la, shukran" — and don't add the apologetic English smile, which reads as "maybe".
- Never take anything into your hand. Not for a second, not to be polite.
- Agree the price before the thing happens. Every time. Taxi, calèche, henna, dinner. If it's more than trivial, have it written or photographed.
- Don't look lost. Download the map offline before you arrive. A person confidently walking the wrong way is left alone; a person turning in circles with a paper map is a job opportunity.
- Take the riad's orientation walk. Most offer one on your first morning, and it converts the medina from a maze into a place with a shape. It is the best free hour in the city.
- Small notes. Having nothing under a 200 dirham note turns every small transaction into a problem.
And the one that matters most in Egypt especially: a licensed local guide for the first day is a shield, not a luxury. Touts don't approach people who obviously already have one. At Giza it turns the horrible day into the amazing one for about the price of dinner.
The bit the videos don't show
Here is Mohammed V, away from the square:
Ten minutes from the medina and nobody is selling you anything. That is the part that gets lost in "is Marrakech stressful" threads: the hassle is geographically concentrated. It lives in the square, the main souk arteries and the monument gates. Step two streets sideways, or go at eight in the morning, and the same city is calm.
And on the Pyramids, since that's where this started
Giza has genuinely changed. The plateau was overhauled: entry moved to a new "Great Gate" on the Fayoum highway, tickets are bought online or at machines, private cars and tour buses are banned inside, and electric shuttles move people around. A good deal of the scrum you see in older videos was at the old Mena House entrance, and that entrance is no longer how you get in.
It is not solved. But if you're planning the 2027 eclipse at Luxor — six minutes of totality over ancient Thebes, and the reason I'll be going — the hassle is a solvable logistics problem, not a reason to stay home.
Where we come into it
Almost none of the above is about hotels, which is the honest position: we sell rooms, and a room can't fix a medina. What it *can* do is decide which version of the city you wake up in. A riad inside the walls means you arrive, drop your bag and walk — no taxi negotiation at midnight with luggage. A place on the ring road means every trip in and out is a transaction.
That's a real decision, and it's worth more than any amount of "top ten tips". Marrakech hotels are here, priced with everything in the number and no fees of ours on top — and I'll keep filming the places I stay in, because a two-minute walk-through tells you more than forty stock photographs.
Nick, founder