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Morocco's New Mazagan Beach Resort Opens With a Bang
Where: 2 4000 El Jadida , Morocco
Fireworks. Fire eaters. Snake charmers—just another night for Lindsay Lohan. (And, no, those are not euphemisms.) If yesterday’s report of LiLo’s alleged tryst with Gerard Butler got your heart racing and you want to follow suit, here’s a little more info on where the action went down.
The Mazagan Beach Resort is located in El Jadida, Morocco, about 55 miles southwest of Casablanca. So, yeah, romance is built right into the sand dunes. And there’s a lot of ’em here: the resort sits on a 4.3 mile beach and you can see the ocean from many of the 500 5-star rooms and suites.
The best way to picture the sprawl of Mazagan? Just think of one of owner Sol Kerzner’s other celeb-magnet properties, such as Atlantis in the Bahamas. The mega-resort includes an 18-hole golf course, a spa offering traditional Moroccan treatments, three kids’ clubs, 11 restaurants and bars, the Mazagan casino, and the Sanctuary Night Club, which promises parties “New York style.” Oh yeah, and there’s a huge conference center if you think you can talk your boss into a corporate retreat in the vein of the OTT Mazagan opening party. (The economy’s looking up, right?)
Tags: Celebrity Scoop / Lindsay Lohan / Hotel Openings / Parties / Morocco Hotels / → All Tags
Lohan Gets It On (Allegedly) With Gerard Butler at Morocco Hotel Opening
Whatever Halloween horrors you saw this weekend, we doubt it can have been much worse than what Gerard Butler might just have woken up to yesterday morning.
According to the Mirror, Gerard had escaped all those cheap tacky parties in LA to go to the opening night of Sol Kerzner’s swish new Mazagan Beach Resort near Casablanca.
Unfortunately for him, it turned out a bit cheap and tacky anyway, as dear old Lindsay Lohan was among the fellow guests. And apparently, after a couple of bevvies, they went through the old dancin’-flirtin-kissin’ routine at the hotel’s new nightclub, Sanctuary, before “leaving the party together in a golf buggy.” A smooth touch there, Gerard. Really smooth.
Tags: Hotel Renovations / Luxury Hotels / Morocco Hotels / → All Tags
La Mamounia Is Re-Opening; Here's Hoping It's Cleaned Up Its Act
Three years is one long time for a refurb, but in the case of La Mamounia in Morocco, it seems like it may have been needed.
The Marrakech hotel stalwart, which originally opened in 1923, closed its doors in July 2006 to the relief of TripAdvisor reviewers, whose general consensus was that it was in dire need of a refurb, and probably an attitude adjustment while they were at it.
But this picture taken last year gave us a bit more hope. And now, it’s been announced that it will reopen on September 29 this year.
There will be 136 rooms and 71 suites in the new Mamounia, as well as three riads – which each house three bedrooms, terraces and private pools. Add in a 27,000 sq foot spa, three restaurants, five bars and 20 acres of gardens, and it’s all sounding pretty good to us. Although it should be pretty good at these prices: starting rates for October are showing up as 6000 dirhams, or $745 (£458). The hotel calls it “more beautiful, more sumptuous and more magical than ever before”. Here’s hoping they don’t let us down.
[Photo: The Dadys]
Tags: Morocco Hotels / Hotel Openings / → All Tags
The King Invites the Rich to Royal Mansour, Marrakech
If the king owns the hotel, it's probably going to be somewhere close to a royal standard, right? That's why we've got a good feeling about Le Royal Mansour in Marrakech, Morocco, with its 53 luxury riads and exotic location built into the ancient wall of the city.
We've already started getting enthused about Le Royal Mansour and now we've got a few more concrete details on the opening schedule. For a start, there'll be a kind of soft opening in September but it's only by invitation and so far, sadly, we haven't found ourselves on the invite list.
The grand — dare we say royal? — opening will take place in November 2009, and you'd better start saving your pennies if you want to book a riad. The cheapest one will go from €1,500 ($2,100); if you want the fanciest "fit for a king" riad then you're looking at €20,000 ($27,900) a night.
King Mohamed VI is planning to get 10 million visitors to Morocco during 2010, and that's one of the reason he's gotten behind projects like the Royal Mansour hotel. But we have to wonder just how many visitors can afford €1,500 plus a night, no matter how cool the hotel looks. We've still got our fingers crossed for a September invitation.
Tags: Hotel Openings / Morocco Hotels / Marrakech Hotels / → All Tags
A Luxe Mega-Riad Is Coming to Marrakech
Anyone who's been to Marrakech will be able to testify to the myriad of places to stay. We used to chalk this up to entrepreneurship on a national scale, but apparently it's been planned at the highest level: the king himself has decreed that he wants 10 million tourists bedding down by 2010, and he wants 160,000 extra beds to put them in.
One that looks particularly exciting is Le Royal Mansour, a mammoth collection of 53 riads (traditional Moroccan houses) stuck together to make 78 bedrooms, as well as a 2500 square-meter spa and hammam, and tunnels running underneath the complex for staff to get around stealthily.
Tags: NYT Reviews / Morocco Hotels / → All Tags
NYT Reviews the Villa Rose Sultan Without Rose-Colored Glasses
We love a hotel celebrity scoop more than, well, anyone we can think of, and we get extra excited about a new hotel when it boasts big-name guests — especially when the celebs in question are actually cool. So we’re intrigued by the Villa Rose Sultan, a boutique hotel that opened last May hidden in the outskirts of Marrakech that has played host to Jake Gyllenhaal, according to this past weekend’s review in the NYT.
But Donnie Darko’s endorsement aside, the NYT didn’t seem particularly impressed by the place — maybe in part because of the hotel’s “impressive pedigree”: Apparently owner Majid Ej Jennane is grandson of imperial Meknes’ former pasha and earned his stripes working in marketing for Chanel and Hermès. Um, yeah, that sort of background would give us pretty high standards too.
Tags: Valentine's Day Hotels / Morocco Hotels / Luxury Camping / → All Tags
Pitch a Tent on Valentine's Day in Morocco
Marrakesh's exclusive Le Palais Rhoul is offering a romantic getaway package that eclipses (supposedly) exclusive dinner reservations at hotspots like Nobu or Tao. Boutique Souk, a specialized travel service in Morocco, has designed a Moroccan love package at the hotel in their six luxury tents set up in their backyard at Palace Gardens (there are proper rooms here too.)
For just £1260 or roughly $1,866.90, they're offering three nights of pampered tent love for couples vying for some authentic lux. Included in the package is a hamman spa experience where you lay on hot tiles and your massage therapist exfoliates you with Moroccan black soap and someone else rubs you down with Argan oils.
Take advantage of that 24-hour "tent service"(get it, like, room service) with yummy plates of tajines and organic salads to devour with just a bong of your tent-side gong. Tents at Le Palais Rhoul have all the amenities you would never get camping, but will probably ignore come Valentine's night. (Cuz you'll be screaming "inshallah, baby" in the name of love!)
Tents have fireplaces, plasma TV's, DVD collections and lucky lovers get private massage tables. The bathroom alone is super spiffy with a fireplace and a wooden elephant head hook to slip off your robes for some romance. Think of those caidal tents that nobleman and their court rocked in the photos of your old history books. The coolest item in the tent suites still, however, has to be the gong.
Do use it sparingly. Remember, it's only fun and funny to the person banging the gong.
Tags: Killer View / Richard Branson / Morocco Hotels / Virgin Hotels / → All Tags
Room With a Killer View: History, Nature and a Pool from Branson's Kasbah
We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
Thanks to HotelChatter tipster srte for dropping this in our Flickr pool. It's from Richard Branson's Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco, and we're more than impressed with this magnificent view from the terrace of the hotel overlooking the pool, and a fantastic garden.
We fell in love with this hotel the first time we looked at it and views like this only make our craving to get there stronger. In a perfect world we'd be booking the Deluxe Suite (which includes a pool) but the Escape Package for that (a three night stay) costs €2,470 (US$3,800) a double, which sadly doesn't fit into our budget this month.
The cheapest option during low season is €320 (US$500) a night for the double, which is more within the realms of possibility.
[Photo: srte]
Tags: Travel and Leisure / It List 2008 / Morocco Hotels / → All Tags
T+L's It List 2008: The Good+The Bad
Travel+Leisure just released its "It List 2008: The Top 30 New Hotels in the World" and overall it's pretty feh. Some of the selections are just downright obvious, like the Regent Bal Harbour in Miami, London's The Connaught, Paris' Le Meurice and The Plaza in New York. However, there are a few choices for which T+L editors deserve credit for venturing outside the safe zone ...
One particular standout is the Hôtel Nord-Pinus Tanger, in Tangier, Morocco. We visited Tangier recently (though we stayed a short jaunt across the Mediterranean in Tarifa, Spain--at a hostel, ahem) and the destination hardly struck us as something that would fall on any travel editor's radar, unless the next travel trend is constantly being harassed by guys selling Moroccan tchotchkes.
T+L says Tangier is "fast recapturing the glamour of its glory days," and with the opening of this riad, "the Old Town finally has the chic little inn it deserves." The hotel possesses just one double room and four suites, which are decorated with bronze, marble and Indian silks. During high season, the prices start at about $440, which includes breakfast, dinner and shuttle to the airport.
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