Fes Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace — Restaurant in Fez

Fes Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace is |My #1 Favorite Marriott in the World! ||What follows are paragraphs of my experience at this hotel on this visit in no particular order. ||I have traveled so much for work that I was Marriott Bonvoy Ambassador Elite for about four years and I have permanent status as well. Happy, I do not travel as much for work and get to spend time at home with my family, but I still get out once in a while for vacation.| |The M Club is new. It is a smaller room with original heavily Moroccan floors and some wall decoration in a modern rather than old Moroccan style. It was built in an old, wide hallway out to the pool that was converted to a kids club that was converted to the new M Club.||The front of the hotel is under construction right now. There is a brand new paver driveway up to the front of the hotel and a brand new fountain and garden area. There are newly planted trees that still have the wooden supports attached. It looks like they have only been there a couple months. It will be beautiful! |There are even newly planted trees out on the street in front of the property.||The huge, beautiful, bi-level pool is in pretty good condition. We love the slowly deepening shallow and separated by the main pool with a wide, tiled wall that my toddler and I used for play. The pool water is crystal clear and does not taste bad. The tiles are mildly rough, so they are not slick or slippery, which I like. It is almost like a pebble sheen surface with beautiful tile view. I cannot imagine anything better and would love to do the same with my pool at home! Now to the bad things to report about the pool environment. The ladder out of the deep end is missing the top rung making the initial step very far down. This is definitely a fall risk as people use the ladder to enter the pool. There is trash in the overflow from the negative edge. There have been Marriott hotel slippers and a chunk of mayonnaise on one of the cabanas for three days, so it does not look like it ever gets cleaned. |The food at the pool is definitely less than desired. Yesterday, we had hamburgers on day-old bread with cold french fries. Today, we had chicken quesadillas that were undercooked and chicken wings that were also undercooked and still frozen on the inside. The fries were served cold once again. I am kind of wondering if they just grab the fries people didn't eat and serve them over and over? We will definitely never order food from the pool again.||Taha front desk reception was super helpful when we arrived and again when we wanted to add extra nights. He is a great communicator and does a wonderful job!||The Moroccan restaurant is still absolutely wonderful. Beautiful tile old Moroccan floors, walls, and beautifully decorated walls and ceilings. I could come here just to look at the room! The Moroccan food is still magnificent and authentic. The live music is purely Moroccan and very nicely done. This is definitely one of the best Moroccan restaurants we have ever found in Morocco after six trips. It's funny that several employees at the resort recommended we try their new Spanish restaurant, but we love the Moroccan restaurant experience so much, we just could not bring ourselves to try anything else!||The breakfast buffet and made-to-order egg bar has been wonderful. I would list this as probably the second best Marriott breakfast in the world, only beaten by the breakfast in Prague, Czech Republic. We got to meet the executive chef, Ahed, and found that all of the food served is made fresh and from local sources. Even the bread, cookies, and pastries are baked on site. From the hot foods, to the pastries. From the available breakfast drinks, to the omelettes and Moroccan meat eggs made to order, this breakfast was filling and delicious! The ex made to order Cook was so sweet and seemed to be able to take order after order from people as they ganged up asking for food. Super busy, but efficient, running multiple skillets at one time. I wish I had gotten her name to compliment her.||The staff here are very sweet. Of note, Fatima Zahara in the M club is great. We met her at the Marriott in Rabat at the M club and were very pleasantly surprised to find her here as well! Rania in M Club and Niteie in M Club watched our 2 year old, giving us a welcome break while we had some refreshments. They were always ready and willing to help us with everything we needed during our stay. Their job is in the M club, but they seem to be experts about the entire Hotel. |Muhammad is a great waiter in the Moroccan restaurant. He is very attentive, accurate, and friendly. He is very knowledgeable of the surrounding area. I love how you greets us by name and already has suggestions for what to eat and drink based on our previous visits.|Badr, at the breakfast restaurant, can be seen zipping around asking if you need anything, bringing coffee, Moroccan tea, fresh napkins. Although the breakfast area seems chaotic, we were able to get everything we wanted.|The executive chef, Ahed, was also around at breakfast and happy to chat about the food operations.||Everyone here seems to be fluent in Arabic and French and so many of the staff are also fluent in English in Spanish. It is definitely easy to be here.||Manal B. is the Guest Relations Supervisor and Idriss El K. is the manager of Rooms Operations. We had several great discussions with them in the M Club and other areas of the hotel at different times. |Amine R., the Guest Experience Manager, is very quiet and unassuming. We saw him all over the resort: out front greeting people. At the pool talking to employees. In the different restaurants talking to employees and guests. He always had a friendly smile and nice things to say to us. We didn't even know his position in the resort until we were about to leave. Imagine how pleasantly surprised we were that this kind and gentle man was the manager!|It's great how we can find management in different areas keeping an eye on things.||Housekeeping is very attentive to details. We love how clean they kept the room for us even with our toddler's messes! They even washed the bottle that we left behind in a rush this morning to get out to breakfast and the pool! ||We have had the pleasure of staying in the same or similar hotel guest room on each visit. This suite is magnificent! I literally have thought about it multiple times while traveling the rest of the world, wondering why every other hotel can't have something as great as this! ||The guests here have also been great. We met a librarian from Canada, a college professor from Virginia, Spaniards, French, and lots of Moroccans! I wish that I was a businessman so I could make business contacts here since they are so widely varied and so nice! There was an engineering conference here and everyone seemed so happy from the conference attendees to their wives and children around the hotel and at the pool.||The professor and I had a great conversation about the service here compared to other places in the world. We came to the conclusion that people who have traveled themselves tend to be much better at providing service to others because they know how it feels to be on the other side. Likewise, travelers probably do better if they have been in the service industry in the past and they know what it takes to help people be happy during their business and vacation travels.||Despite the problems that we found at the pool with maintenance, cleanliness, and food service, this place still ranks My #1 Favorite Marriott in the World! We just checked out this morning after adding extra nights and I literally cannot wait for our next visit to Fes Marriott Hotel...

First to the good part: The welcome and check in experience had been very nice, our platinum status with Marriott Bonvoy was acknowledged and we received an upgrade. The room and bed were very clean and comfortable. The gym facility is very large with loads of equipment leaving no wishes open. Pool was also very welcoming and clean.

The bad part: There was a light odor of smoke in the room, probably from the time when every room used to be a smoking room. We tried to order drinks at the pool and had to ask the staff passing by 4 times for the menu, once we received it we kept being ignored as they had been focused on serving an elder couple and a group of women at the pool. After not being able to put an order in for 30 minutes after continuously trying we gave up and headed to the room. After dinner in town we decided to head to the bar for drinks and the same problem we had on the pool happened again. The staff was not paying attention and it took forever to put our order in. There had been at least 4 people working for about 15 guests who mostly had only drinks. But it seemed like some staff was only there to clear tables and settle the bills but not take our orders. The waiter in charge rather played/ messaged on his phone throughout the evening then trying to provide a good service for all guests. It almost seemed we had not been deemed fit for good service by his standards and you could definitely sense some attitude towards us requesting a decent service. The breakfast was below average and far from what you would expect from a Marriott hotel. The vegetables and fruits on display had been looking quite sad and seemed like they had been sliced up days before or bought ready sliced. The juice is were clearly not fresh and you can tell that they were from cartons. Mint tea was cold and not hot enough. There was no one to bring us to the table but some guests had more service on with beverages brought out to them. This doesn’t seem to be due to a lack of staff but rather a lack of ownership and commitment to good service. We asked if it would been possible to make us something that would fit with our dietary needs but had been denied right away without even listening. It escalated a little bit when another couple asked for vegan food with the remark that they explicitly requested it on their reservation. Despite the large number of chef, no one was willing and did not put up the effort to make quick and simple vegan dishes for us at breakfast. They did not ask if we are staying longer so we had to tell them to prepare vegan dishes for the second day. On the second day, they made a toast with some chopped up tomatoes onions etc. and a soup which was just blend couscous with some water.

To summarize this experience: It seems that this lack of commitment towards service and showing of below average food quality had been going on for years. It is quite sad as I have experienced Morocco to be a country with fantastic food and people so far. Staff and management seem to be not aware of the issue as most guests are on booked tours and therefore making up the majority of guests here. They get those guests regardless of their effort towards them. For guests that are not on those tours who know a certain standard provided within the Marriott Bonvoy group this is unfortunately very underwhelming. The age of the hotel is starting to show but this wouldn’t have been an issue if the service would have been good. If you just need a clean and comfortable bed for the night this hotel might be it. If you expect anything above that you will be quite disappointed especially when you know some of their...

(Stayed during a Trafalgar tour in November 2024)

In reading other reviews I know this hotel can be hit or miss but luckily for me I feel like this was a hit.

The property itself is very big and has a nice sized pool to match. Ivina both the restaurant and also had the breakfast buffet.  Both were tasty and had several options. I especially enjoy the fresh made omelette.

This was definitely a 4.5-star stay. Since it was missing some amenities I've come to expect a five-star hotels I can't give it five stars.

I was given a third floor room towards the end of the hotel so I wasn't near the elevators in allowed for a very quiet stay.

Walked into a clean and pretty spacious room.  Unfortunately is a single person I had twin double beds so I'm not sure what a king size room would have looked like as the second bed took up a significant part of the room.  There is a TV that is appropriately sized for the room along with a printed channel lineup.

There is a carpeted bedroom area but did appear stain free - and tile in the entry and bathroom. The room did not have slippers or a bathrobe but did having hanging sign that you could purchase a bathrobe - just didn't supply one.

There is a mini fridge (didn't seem to work well) but no mini bar.  I was supplied with a clean kettle, two waters, two cups, and four different flavors of teas and four instant coffees and sugars.

The beds themselves were rather hard and had two smallish pillows for each.  Lighting was a bit dark and was controlled on a single switch. The reading light next to my bed did not work but it was on a separate switch.

You can control the temp in your room - which is always an added bonus. The room also had a very lovely balcony with a slider facing the pool. I had two comfortable chairs, a table, and an added bonus of a side sitting area. As an added bonus, I was able to close curtains on my patio to give the patio a privacy factor - which I have not experienced before and was rather nice.

Bathroom had a separate water closet.  The shower pressure was adequate and temperature was consistent. However my shower head - although clean - didn't tilt and so it was more like a rain shower as I can only have in one spot - which is good because the shower door seemed broken and if I hadn't closed myself in I would have got more water on the floor. There was separate shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel that you find at Marriott. The sink area had bar soap unfortunately no place for the soap except for directly on the counter.

I attempted to book a massage but unfortunately they didn't have any same-day availabilities for me to review when I inquired.

The pool area had a number of seating options and spaces available. Being in the offseason the pool was rather cold so I didn't get to enjoy it but I did sit for about an hour in one of the provided hanging chairs and enjoyed the warm sun.

The hotel is in walking distance to some great area restaurants and coffee bars that I was able to enjoy during my 2-nignt stay. The hotel did offer a couple of food options as well.

If in the area and looking for a Marriott, I would recommend a stay at...