Hôtel Chellal — Hotel in caïdat de Tanant

As you’ll see by my TA reviews I’m a well season traveler, not afraid to go off the Beaton path and provide honest and informative reviews trying to be fair and balanced along the way.||I stayed at Hotel Chellal D’Ouzoud for 1 night towards the end of a 10 day stay in Morocco in January 2020. ||I drove my hire car from Marrakesh (165km / 2hrs 45mins) and on arrival in Ouzoud proceeded to find the hotel, which claimed on booking.com to have free parking on site, it transpires that this is a false claim so I had to pay one of the many locals which surround you as you drive into the village 30 Dhs for the privilege in some sort of parking scam.||The hotel is difficult to find and cannot be driven to directly, once I finally found it there was nobody who spoke English, so check in was impossible... The cleaner managed to get one of the local English speaking guides (everybody in Ouzoud is apparently a guide of some sort, although none hold any formal qualifications, so be careful) who proceeded to check me in and provided me with the obligatory complimentary mint tea, while trying to sell me a guided tour of the falls (welcome to Morocco - it’s a national pass time). ||The “English speaking” hotel manager eventually arrived later in the day, but didn’t speak that good English if I’m completely honest.||I was shown to my room, room 4 on the first floor (I know it was room 4 as the number was written clearly in black marker pen on the door as the door number was missing) and found only one of the corridor lights working and on entering my room only the main light worked. ||The whole hotel as well as my room was extremely cold and it didn’t warm up at any time during my stay (no heating) apart from a fire that was lit in the main communal area in the evening, which attracted a handful of local “guides” to keep warm and then promptly proceeded in trying to sell me a guided tour of the falls and surrounding area. ||With no room/hotel heating and single glazed windows the extremely cold room had condensation all over the windows in the morning.||On the whole the hotel was clean and decorated in a traditional Moroccan style with local art work and upholstery throughout which was great to see. I’m sure that when it was built it was a pretty grand place, however years of neglect have left it looking extremely run down and tired.||The Wi-Fi is Definitely the worst I have ever come across in any commercial accommodation I have stayed in world wide, and I struggled to even load an e-mail or read a post on social media, neither of which are data heavy tasks. For some reason every time I came back to the hotel after going out for a walk and as soon as I went to bed the Wi-Fi was unplugged and switched off??? None of this poor Wi-Fi coverage was due to the remote nature of Ouzoud as a village location, as a nearby restaurant within 100m had awesome Wi-Fi.||The showers were luke warm at best and I certainly wouldn’t describe them as anywhere near hot. The shower head didn’t fit the holder so I had to hold it while showering in the bitter cold en-suite shower area, which was not a good experience.||I attempted to order some food at approx 8:30 pm only to be told that they only had chips available (fries if you are American and reading this), I declined the offer and went to the only nearby restaurant that had any food left and had yet another Veggie Tagine (at least they had booming Wi-Fi)||The bed was pretty comfortable and I had a good nights sleep - I was lucky enough to have a really good 4 season sleeping bag that goes down to -20 with me to protect me from the cold as I had just returned from climbing Mt Toubkal in the Moroccan high Atlas mountain range, without it I think I would have froze in the bedroom of Hotel Chellal D’Ouzoud||The cheap price of 190 MAD (£15:50/€18/$20) per night includes breakfast which was very basic indeed, I paid 65 MAD (£5/€6/$6:75) per night in Marrakesh and got a way better breakfast provided in the price of my accommodation with hot water and good Wi-Fi.||To be honest I couldn’t wait to leave this hotel.||Would I stay hear again or recommend to friends and family? No I would not !!! - Do yourself a favour and stay...

We arrived at what was looking like a building site and we were a bit worried ...||But you turn a corner and suddenly you are in chilled out markets on well worked steps and pathways leading down to the Cascades which are simply STUNNING! ||The hotel is at the top and run by Abdul. He was the friendliest most welcoming owner you could hope to meet. ||We were staying a few days so money wasn't a problem and you set up a tab and pay it off when you want. Our friend bought a bag in marrakech which broke on the zipper, he had it mended free of charge and on her birthday provided, again free of charge the MOST DELICIOUS cake I've ever eaten.||The rules were simple: do what you want, smoke if you like, where you like, don't be too noisey at night (they sometimes lock the front door by midnight) and just relax and enjoy yourself.||Abdul gave advice on places to check out, reasonable prices to pay for things and he and his staff were as attentive and friendly as you could hope.||The rooms are simple, colourful and pleasant with facilities that might need a little work but as you are only in there to sleep and change its comfortable enough for the price.||The breafasts were freshly made and the dinners, wonderfully flavoursome and organic with a fair amount grown locally.||The roof has a terrace for late night star gazing and chilling.||||We met Mullerd, who is developing the area to have a small market area on the top and a few more small hotels. Currently running treks in the area and in the desert, he and his family (there are only so many families living here) are putting in a lot of effort to make this wonderful. Now is the time to go though, before it gets too much ... which I am told they are aware of for their development plans. ||Most people come on a tour, passing through after a few hours ... the ones that stay are invited by locals to moonlit drumming circles and small gatherings with the characters that live there which is fascinating to hear of their lives and share tea or hashish looking out from lcal cafes with stunning backdrops of the waterfall.||As for the hotal .... I cannot recommend this place highly enough for couples or small groups, this place is wonderful and I wish Abdul and Mullered all the best and hope to...

We only stopped here to eat at the restaurant, it's one of the only places in Ouzoud that sells sandwiches and after 2 weeks in Morocco we'd eaten enough tagine. After ordering 2 chicken sandwiches and some beef skewers our drinks arrived fairly promptly, but the food seemed to take a while. Shortly after ordering one of the waiters at the hotel left on a bicycle and we joked that he had gone to buy our food. We must have actually been right as we waited until he returned with a carrier bag, was brought some bread and olives about 10 mins after that and then around 15 mins after that our food arrived. We must have waited around 45mins-1hr for our food from ordering. My partner started to eat his sandwich when he pulled out a piece of chicken that looked a bit too pink. After wading through half of my sandwich, every bit of chicken was raw in the middle. This was the same for both of our sandwiches. Clearly they must have been rushing because we had waited so long already, but we'd have much rather waited some more! We were quite embarrassed to raise this as didn't want to offend, but to make matters worse, when we went inside to quietly let them know, they told us we would pay for one of the sandwiches not two. Clearly this was unacceptable, but when we raised this they tried to make us feel guilty by saying that they would have to pay for it if we didn't. Very much a shame as it seemed like a nice place and the beef skewers were actually nice, but it was not good to be served chicken not throughly cooked and then to be asked to pay for it. Would...