I am a very regular traveller but not usually one to write reviews, positive or negative, however my girlfriend and I are currently on a 2 week tour of Morocco which has taken us to some fabulous places which I want to say thank you to via positive reviews... Unfortunately it also took us to the Movenpick Hotel in Tangier!
This hotel single-handedly nearly ruined our entire holiday - I am just glad it was close to the start and we had time to recover the experience.
Firstly, the place was an absolute building site. Now I accept that works / renovations have to be done, but if you call yourself a 5 star hotel make some effort to to minimise guest disruption at least! Nothing advertised was available. After we had eventually found the temporary entrance hidden around the back we were checked in. Not the warmest greeting I’ve ever received... We got the one working lift up to our floor and tried to settle in but after we discovered the ants that also seemed to be settling in for the night, the leaking taps, the sink that didn’t drain and the useless A/C we thought it best to move rooms. Simple enough you would think... Oh no! The young gentleman on reception actually huffed and sighed when we asked - to our faces! After we had pushed through our request we waited 10 minutes for the promised help with our luggage before just moving it ourselves.
I also asked if it would be possible to stock the minibar and was very rudely told no, we would just have to use room service as it was Ramadan. Now we are well aware that we are visitors in a Muslim country and fully appreciate the restrictions of Ramadan. We have taken great pains to not eat or drink in public where possible (outside of tourist filled restaurants) and have used overpriced minibar drinks / snacks in our room where perhaps we would have sat outside at the bar in other times so this just felt rude and unnecessary. In fact, it was just a great example of how unfriendly and unprofessional the majority of the staff were. There were a couple of specific exceptions but the whole time we were there we just felt unwelcome. Everywhere else we have stayed has made us feel it is more than acceptable for us to eat and drink within the privacy of our own room, and we have been told on many occasions in other hotels, that as non Muslims, eating and drinking anywhere within the hotel is absolutely not a problem.
And so we come to dinner - I can think of many words to describe the food at this hotel but most would just be considered rude so I’m going to just use TERRIBLE. We were directed first to the Ramadan buffet and in principle this would have been fine; we have enjoyed many traditional / local dishes during our travels but always with some sort of guide as to what was what. This was an unidentified melee and with dozens and dozens of very hungry observers at the tables, I’m not even sure we would have gotten chance to ask questions. Luckily one of the specific exceptions I mentioned previously rescued us and a lovely young lady in a front of house role said we could use the bar restaurant instead. We sat patiently for over 90 minutes in total waiting for our food and it was just awful. It really didn’t help either that there seemed to only be one waiter working and he was running all over the place so it was impossible to catch his attention - especially as when he didn’t have a tray in his hands, he was texting on his phone!
A poor night’s sleep on a very uncomfortable bed got us to breakfast and it was no better. Poor selection, dirty plates and no spoons just to summarise a few issues.
We tried again to request luggage assistance for our departure but were again left stranded and ended up dragging our own cases out with not even the slightest hint of an apology.
I cannot stress enough how horrible the whole experience at this hotel was. We intend to raise a formal complain with our travel company and recommend, in the strongest terms, the removal of this hotel from their list but I hope this review saves someone else from having to suffer the same fate in the meantime.
