Hôtel Batha

Do not stay at the Hotel Batha under any circumstances! Not only are the rooms rundown but the whole place is corrupt.

The first day that the maids made up our room, a large quantity of Euros and Dollars disappeared from inside a locked knapsack in our room. The thief took the time to figure out a way to get through the locked zippers and cleverly left all of the Moroccan money that was there, as well as a few Euros and Dollars – obviously hoping that we wouldn’t notice what was missing until we left Morocco (and this hotel). When we complained at the desk, they first accused us of lying and then, mysteriously, punished us by halting maid service to our room for the rest of our stay. They had us write down all the details of the theft and said they would take it up with the hotel manager. But we went to the police and, when they dragged the hotel manager in to meet with us two days later, he claimed that he’d never heard about it until then. It is clear that the staff was all trying to cover up and deny that one of their own took our money.

You should also know that, while this hotel does provide hot water, they only do so for a few hours a day. It stops at 10 pm so, if you are planning on taking a shower before you go to bed, you will be hustling to make it home from dinner in time – especially since all the decent restaurants in Fez are some distance from this hotel. Imagine coming home at 9:30 to beat the deadline, discovering that you had no clean towels (because they mysteriously stopped maid service to your room because you complained about the theft from it) and having to hustle to get new towels in time to shower before the water gets cut off. You see, all the problems of this place just build upon each other!

What’s more, the shower head in our shower wouldn’t stay attached to the wall in a position that sprayed straight once the water was turned on, even though the stream was just a trickle. The toilet was missing its handle and the door to the toilet wouldn’t actually close. The faucets on the sink felt like they were going to fall off every time we operated them. The air conditioning was noisy enough to keep us awake but way too weak to cool our room. The closet door couldn’t be opened without an epic struggle. The “breakfast” is just coffee, juice, and bread.

They’ve done a lot to pretty up the common areas but it is just lipstick on a pig. The bottom line is that it’s a shabby, dingy little place there to relieve you of your money and nothing else. The only positive thing about this hotel is that it is situated close to the medina but that is a mixed blessing, too – it comes with being far from the decent restaurants so you will be taking a long taxi ride away from the hotel every night as it is (you don’t want to eat at the hotel’s restaurant).