Is Casablanca good for tourists?

Sep 8, 2022
6 min read

We quickly got over the fast pace, hustle and bustle of Marrakech, which was totally worth it but in small doses for me.

he next leg of our journey was a visit to Casablanca the question I will be answered is, is Casablanca worth your time & money?

What I really have to address first and foremost about Casablanca is the fact that that it’s not meant as a tourist place, it’s a Moroccan business hub, a city you travel to if you’re going to spend most of your time at your resort at the beach or in or around your hotel space.

One or two days is enough for any tourist in Casablanca, is it safe? Yes Casablanca is considerably safe as safe a any highly populated city can be.
Is it worth a visit now this is a complicated answer read my story and makeup your own mind, is the best answer I can give.

Let me dial it back a bit, and tell you how we got there.

Our Riad arranged a taxi to take us from Marrakech to Casablanca at our request, the idea was we would stop in different places and see the country small villages little

towns (that didn’t happen).

The locals advised us to get a train they were probably right, though we didn’t take their advice.

We paid approximately £112 at the time it was 1300 Dirhams for the taxi to Casablanca.

We had stayed in Marrakech for about four days and I think by this time we had done almost everything that we could’ve done there hence deciding that we needed to go somewhere else, as a matter of fact we had actually planned this while we are still in the UK, we figured if we wanted to stay any longer in the old town we could just extend our stay, as the Riads were relatively cheap plus it wasn’t high season so availability wasn't an issue .

After lovely yet busy four days we went ahead with our plans off to Casablanca for what we considered to be a nice break from the medina life.

But once we got there we very quickly realised that this was a commercial city with not much for us to do, exactly as everybody we had told about the plan had said.

Most people advised us to cut that trip shorter than a week.

But as you know every new place always has something new and different to explore.

Unfortunately we went there with a tourist mindset so we wanted ready made tourist places to see.

This mentality was not great because Casablanca is a city and you have to be prepare for a city holiday or a city break kind of experience.

I’m going to start off by telling you the amazing things about Casablanca.

It’s got beautiful roads, nice shops, nobody is hassling you to purchase anything.

You go into stores the prices are displayed there is no haggling for the most part, which is a bit of a relief from the very friendly yet pushy Marrakesh customer service.

The downside of Casablanca is everybody is kind of miserable as are most major busy cities around the world.

I guess people are very busy concentrating and focusing on whatever they’re doing majority of the times, this may seem like most people are not as cheeky chappie as the people of Tangier let’s say. Personally, I didn’t find people who live in Casablanca as friendly either but each to their own I guess.

Another surprising turn of events was I never had any travellers diarrhoea in Marrakesh, but as soon as I hit Casablanca and started eating the food, I instantly got it.

I usually get a bad tummy whenever we travel but not the others so this was my own experience.

The others got it but not as bad as me.

I had to come back home with a bad tummy.

So not sure what that is about but I know that in Marrakesh I didn’t get it and I suspect it’s food or the fresh juices I drank.

It also has to be said that I was eating and drinking street food in Marrakech, I assumed it would be relatively safe as all the tourists seemed to be eating it and drinking everywhere, but obviously I was probably wrong.

I have a delicate tummy than most or maybe because I haven’t travelled in a while my tummy was not used to different types of food.

It wasn’t a bad tummy ache as in my tummy was cramping as much, it was bearable even though I could have done without it.

So what did we do in Casablanca obviously went to the mosque which is one of the main attractions over there.

We also went to the mall which I am sure would bring comfort so someone missing home, but if you’ve been to the mall in western countries there’s not much to see over there just the usual culprits high-end designers Louis Vuitton, Dior Etc mid range brands Massimo Dutti, Zara and the like.

As for us this is not reason we had visited Morocco for so we didn’t find that useful.

However, for some people who are looking for a city break this might be idea.

Cafés restaurants all could be a really experience in Casablanca.

The taxis are very easy to grab from point A to point B just the same as in Marrakesh they tend to look at you and charge you accordingly.

If you know the prices or you have somebody who can advise you on roughly how much you should be paying for taxis, have that information at hand.

Just to make sure you are not left out of pocket unnecessarily, some drivers will charge you ridiculously; I’ll give you an example where I took a taxi the journey was suppose cost 70 dirhams well he charged us 300 dirhams which is kind of cruel really.

To be honest with you majority of the times we stayed at the hotel it was the Hilton Garden Inn pretty new, it was located a little out of town there was not much to do around the area except for a nice traditional Moroccan restaurant which was next door of the hotel.

The hotel itself had a good size swimming pool and had loads of lounges that we that spend time in.

Before we decided to leave Casablanca and go to Tangier for a day trip watch out for the next blog post where I tell you all about it this was one of my highlights for the trip.

It was much more exciting to us then Casablanca and I would definitely recommend skipping Casablanca for Tangier if you are on a tight schedule.

You will not regret it skip Casablanca in my opinion there is not much you need to see in Casablanca if you live in big cities like London Manchester, New York.

What I realised being in Casablanca is being a tourist is not so bad at times.

I figured the idea of hanging with the locals can be passed in this situation, as it can be just like being at home, ending up around people under high pressure and stressful environment.

Let’s me honest that’s not what I went on holiday for so being a stereotypical tourist didn’t seem so bad after all.

Seeing places, eating different foods and experience new things in a new country is aways great.

The safest way to do all this is with other tourist.

Safety in numbers as they would say.

On our way back to Marrakech from Casablanca we used a local taxi let’s just say it was high-risk.

We paid more for it than we did our initial taxi on our first leg of the journey.

This was our fault we could have easily said no and got a better car but couldn’t be bothered.

I can’t speak for everyone's experience but my own experience when it came to most services

was the following.

I found that getting to familiar with service providers before creating some boundaries could land you with an unfair deal on almost everything you intend to buy on your part. I guess this applies everywhere in the world but it really hit home for me when I was in Morocco.

Do business first and get familiar once that’s settled.

I chuckled to myself and thought, every business undergraduate student needs to visit this place to learn the art of selling.

Ps I left my heart in Tangier and I will definitely be back.

That will be the next blog post look out for it.