Why Morocco is the ideal family adventure destination

Written by: Aimee White - Copywriter at Explore Worldwide
Published: 1 September 2025

Choosing the right family adventure holiday can be a challenge – especially when you're juggling different ages, interests and energy levels. That's exactly why Morocco stands out as an ideal travel destination. If you're travelling with curious young children or thrill-seeking teens, there's plenty for all ages to get stuck into, from overnight desert camping to surfing off the Atlantic Coast.

Morocco: A country that fuels family imagination

Morocco blends its geography, culture, history and storytelling into every adventure. Children can learn through hands-on exploration, like tracing ancient trade routes across the Atlas Mountains or visiting spice markets in Marrakech to spark curiosity and imagination. Your expert tour leader will guide you around historic medinas and past centuries-old architecture, with child-friendly narratives that bring Morocco's rich past to life.

We offer two family tours to Morocco:

• Family Marrakech, Atlas and Essouira Adventure: Perfect for children aged seven and above, this eight-day tour sees you learn to cook a tagine with a local family in an Atlas mountain village.
• Family Atlas Mountain and Sahara Adventure: Also suitable for children aged seven and above, this eight-day tour sees you head deep into the desert dunes on camelback to sleep under the stars at a Berber camp.

Practicalities for travelling families

Our family trips to Morocco are suitable for children aged 7 and over, ensuring a child-friendly pace throughout. When it comes to family travel insurance, make sure you purchase a policy that provides cancellation and curtailment to cover the full value of your trip.

With its north African location, Morocco gets extremely hot during the summer months, so the busiest times to visit are actually in spring and autumn, when it's slightly cooler. Our family Morocco tours operate in October and December. These are much quieter times to visit. Plus, the temperatures are much more bearable, with daytime temperatures vary between 16-28C, and lows of 4-16C by night in October and December.

Packing for Morocco should consist of the following essentials, whatever time of year you visit:

• Thin, light layers
• Sun protection
• Snacks
• Reusable water bottles (grab 15% off a Water-to-Go filtration bottle)

We've answered more of your family holiday questions

Now that we've covered the essentials, let's dive into the heart of the adventure: what it's really like to experience one of our bestselling family tours. Join Kate Arthur as she shares her day-by-day account of her journey through Morocco:

"We were incredibly lucky to win a holiday to Morocco with Arrange My Escape and Explore! Our trip was offered as part of the Waddle of Worcester event in summer 2024, which aimed to support St Philips Hospice. It had been so long since our family of five had been on a foreign holiday that not all members could even remember going away! The prize was an 8 day family tour of Marrakech, Essaouira and the Atlas Mountains.

Day 1: First impressions of Marrakech

The children were very excited to fly to Africa! Though I had been on a similar holiday nearly 30 years ago (!) I recognised very little of modern Marrakech and that started with the airport, which is very new. We were met by taxi and taken to our modern, comfortable and centrally located hotel.

Day 2: Exploring Marrakech's historic heart

We started the day meeting our tour leader, Bubkur, and the two other families on our tour. Easily the best thing about this sort of organised small group trip (which we had never done before) was being guided through the whole experience by the kindest and most knowledgeable of men.

Bubkur explained our whole itinerary this first day, and in fact he managed every aspect of our trip: providing local knowledge, liaising with all the drivers, local tour guides, families and hotels. As a mum, having someone tell us all when to turn up and decide where we were eating for dinner was the most welcome and relaxing aspect of all.

We started our day with a visit to the historic part of Marrakech, taken by a local guide. We then followed to the beautiful Bahia Palace, named after the King’s favourite wife. Our guide explained that Moroccan buildings, like Moroccan people, value their beauty on the inside. Inside the palace were gardens surrounded by exquisite tile work and delicate cedar carving.

We then went to to the Medina, where leather bags, beautiful fabrics and many tagines could be bought. It was a lot quieter than I remember from my previous trip, and having a local guide enabled us to get a sense of the history.

Day 3: A warm welcome from the Berbers

On our third day, we went hiking through Toubkal National Park up to a Berber village to eat tagine with a family. Arriving at our host’s house, we were shown the kitchen where they prepared tagines. It was very simple, but the method of preparation meant that the food cooked for a long time and it was truly the most delicious tagine of the whole trip. We saw the clay ovens on which bread is spread thin and flat and stuck to the wall of the ovens and ate from shared bowls, which is the usual way for Moroccans.

Day 5: Arriving in breezy Essaouira

Day 4 was a travel day, and on day 5 we went to Fatima’s house, where we learned how to make couscous the Moroccan way. It was really interesting to visit a family home and discover that couscous is usually served at a big multi-generational family lunch on a Friday, after 12pm prayers.

Later, we stopped at the Argan oil collective, where we saw how the oil is extracted from argan nuts. Once we'd bought some souvenirs, it was back in the coach to travel on smooth, orange-tree-lined motorways to the port town of Essaouira.

We arrived to a windy sand-swept coastal town, and as we were staying inside the walls of the Medina, hired a trolley to take our bags to our riad. The whole group was charmed by the fresh air - and what a treat to stay inside the walls of the medina! The hotel was a beautiful riad-style, with rooms surrounded by a peaceful courtyard. The sun-dotted roof gardens offered another view of the city, white white buildings decorated with blue woodwork.

Day 6: Walking tours (and feline encounters)

Our time in Essaouira was at a more relaxed pace and included more free time, which everyone enjoyed. In the morning we had a tour of the Medina. I found the history absolutely fascinating. The tour also took in the port and finished at the silversmithing workshops, where we all took home a souvenir.

The children were delighted by the enormous population of extremely contented feral cats, and the mums enjoyed shopping for handbags, shoes, towels and a sneaky early evening drink in a stylish rooftop bar with spectacular views over the crashing waves. I wish I was there now. We ate that evening in the hotel restaurant, which was in an inner courtyard and entirely delicious.

Day 8: Back to Marrakech for our farewell feast

On day 7, we returned to Marrakech to spend our final days of the trip in the Moroccan capital. We tested our own navigation skills to get ourselves to the Medina for some last minute shopping and pocket money spending. We managed to buy some presents for family and friends of cedar-wood items, leather goods, silver-and-turquoise jewellery, shoes and a now much-loved Mo Salah top!

I was delighted to try pastilla; a small savoury pastry covered in cinnamon and icing sugar. We then promptly discovered why a guide was so necessary when we got entirely lost on our way out! It was a bit of a scramble back to the hotel to say goodbye to our long-suffering guide and head to the airport.

Final thoughts:

The best thing about this holiday was being able to show my children the world, to learn about another country and culture. Plus, as a mum, to have it all organised for you, was so relaxing.

It is an adventure you are sharing with other families, and there is no other way to have these sorts of experience without it. None of us will ever forget it for the rest of our lives, the beauty of the country and the kindness and openness of the Moroccan people - and most of all, our guide, Bubkar."