Riu Tikida Garden Marrakech

Mohammed Chop is your guy for excursions (he is just outside the hotel). We booked the balloon ride and city tour with him. Absolutely amazing experience from start to finish! The communication was excellent and the team were so friendly, welcoming and professional. We were treated like VIPs throughout, with prompt collection and great organisation. They even checked in with us afterwards to make sure everything was okay. Fantastic service and an unforgettable experience, great value for money - highly recommend! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Check in was quick and easy. Loved the fruit juice they gave you and loved that they helped you with your bags, which was a nice bonus.

Rooms-We are a family of four so we had two rooms with sort of a pool view. The view was limited due to the amount of trees but this wasn’t a problem for us . One of the rooms had an ant problem. When we arrived the desk area was covered in ants. A man came to try and sort the ants out and said he would have to come back in the morning. He did come back the next day but only after I had reported it at reception again. Once he had been the ants didn’t reappear until about 6 days after. Then I had to phone for them to come again. This time though the treatment didn’t work as well and we kept getting ants on and around the desk. There even ended up being a small collection of dead ants in the corner which never got removed. The aircon in both rooms stopped working but it got fixed the same day.

Cleaning-we had clean towels everyday and the room was always clean apart from the dead ant collection in the corner. The cleaning and maintenance staff were always cleaning the hotel/pool areas every day so I can’t fault that. The barmen were regularly walking around the pool collecting empty cups which was great as sometimes you’d get bees landing in your drinks if they were left too long.

Sun beds - I can’t comment on the sun beds near the pool bar or the swim up rooms but there were always beds available by the entertainment pool so we had no problems getting sun beds. It would’ve been nice one day on our trip to get one of the fancy Bali beds but they were always taken up by the same people. I went for a run a few days at 6am and they were all gone by then. I personally think those beds should be on a booking system, giving you at least one day during your stay where you can use them. You shouldn’t have to get up really early to reserve them. Also another negative was that people paid the pool guys to reserve beds. I also witnessed on 3 occasions one of the pool guys moving people’s sun beds (people had actually been using the beds all morning and were either in the pool or getting lunch) and the pool guy would come moving their sun beds and put two sunbeds and a parasol in a certain spot for a couple who wanted that area and couldn’t be bothered getting there early enough to get that space.

Entertainment- I booked on to a few activities which I enjoyed. I did the cocktail making, the tea making and the cooking demonstration and had great fun. I did book on and turn up to a few of the exercise classes and no one showed up. I spoke to the entertainment guy (mo) about this and he said that on his end of the app there were no classes on at this time and instead he did water polo etc Yet on my app water polo wasn't always on there so this is something they need to look at has it was annoying getting dressed to do line dancing etc and no one being there. The entertainment at night finished at 11pm and it was very repetitive. We went for two weeks and were fed up of seeing the same thing by the end. The band was good but after seeing them at least 4x a week we started to get a bit fed up and had a few early nights. Even the quiz questions on the Moroccan night were the exact same so when a group on our second week got 19 questions right and won a bottle of fizz, people complained that they had cheated but no it was just the same questions from the first week. We ourselves got 16 questions right.

Food- the servers in the restaurants were always helpful, one took a shine to my Husband and made sure we always got a table and drinks. On a few occasions in the morning I would go for breakfast alone or with my daughter and the same treatment wasn’t offered. So even though they were friendly I do wonder if this was a genuine thing or they just wanted a tip (yet I was the one looking after the money haha). It was quite funny as my husband is usually not as friendly with people as me but I think he actually enjoyed getting waited on this holiday. It would’ve been nice if the food was hot instead of Luke warm. Also I wish they served toasties etc for lunch. Near the end of our holiday we started eating out at other restaurants as 3/4 developed stomach bugs and we weren’t sure what was causing it. My youngest daughter spent most of the second week in bed as she felt so poorly and needed to be near the toilet. I did let reception know and told the tui reps but nothing was really done. The woman on reception did offer to phone for a doctor but we wanted to wait until we got home. I did visit the pharmacy and got given some tablets but they didn’t really help my daughter. So it did put a downer on our holiday as my daughter felt so poorly she just wanted to go home. My oldest daughter was the only one who didn’t develop a stomach bug and she’s the only one who doesn’t eat meat so that’s making me think was it the meat making us poorly. I did witness the chefs washing their hands etc but I also witnessed one chef using the same utensils to cook raw and cooked chicken. We will never know but because of our rubbish we felt. I wouldn’t return to this hotel.

General- the hotel grounds are stunning, all the staff seem friendly. The security guard on the gate was very friendly and the chef who did the cooking demo remembered me and always asked how I was etc There isn’t much to explore directly outside the hotel. There is a little shop (Mohammed chop) and I managed to get an hairbrush there has i forgot mine. It wasn’t like what we have at home but it was cheap and did the job and I was impressed with how quick he managed to find one for us. The shuttle bus is free and easy to use but just be wary of the men who great you off the bus. They pretend they work for the government but don’t, I tried to warn a fellow traveller as she was going to follow one and next minute the man started hitting me with his lanyard and screaming in my face. That was the only time I felt unsafe in Morocco.