Hire a private driver in Marrakech

What you are actually hiring

You are hiring time, not distance.

A transfer is a journey: we take you from A to B and the booking is finished. A private driver is a block of hours in which the car is yours. He waits outside the restaurant, he finds somewhere to leave the car while you spend two hours in the souk, and he is where he said he would be when you come out with more bags than you left with.

That difference is the whole point. It is why a day of four stops costs less as a driver hire than as four separate transfers, and why a single trip to the airport should never be booked this way.

The hours, and the honest bit about them

A half day is six hours. A full day is twelve. The clock starts at the pickup time you gave us, not when you eventually come downstairs.

Days run over — that is normal, and we would rather plan for it than pretend. If it is going to, tell the driver during the day rather than at the end. He will tell you what the extra time costs before it is spent, and you decide. A bill that grows after the fact is the thing people fear about this arrangement, and it is the thing we will not do.

Twelve hours is a long day for a driver as well as for you. If your plan is really fourteen hours, book two days or start later; a tired driver on a mountain road is a worse deal than the money you saved.

Several days

Consecutive days cost less per day than a single day. The longer the booking, the lower the daily rate, and the booking form applies it automatically once you pick a start and an end date — you do not have to ask for it or negotiate it.

For a multi-day hire outside Marrakech, tell us where you are sleeping each night when you book. Where the driver stays is our cost, not yours, but it changes what we can promise about start times, and it is better settled before you leave than at ten at night in Ouarzazate.

When this is the wrong booking

If you want one journey, book a transfer. The airport to your riad, Marrakech to Essaouira — those are fixed fares and they are cheaper than holding a car for six hours.

If you want to see one place and come back, look at the day trips: they are priced per person, the route is planned and, for the Agafay desert, the extras are packaged rather than negotiated at the gate.

Driver hire earns its price when the day has several stops, when the plan may change while you are out, when there are children or luggage that you do not want to move in and out of strange cars, or when you simply do not want to think about transport between one thing and the next.

Practical

Say roughly where you are going when you book. Not to hold you to it — the plan can change on the day — but because the Atlas roads and the city are different drives and we would rather send the right vehicle.

Agree any change of plan with the driver as it happens, including extra hours.

Carry some cash on desert and mountain routes. The card terminal in the vehicle needs mobile coverage, and on the way to Merzouga, Zagora or high in the Atlas there are long stretches with none. Card works in and around Marrakech.

Cancellation is free, because you have paid nothing. Tell us 24 hours ahead where you can, so the driver and the vehicle can be released to someone else.