Born from a love of travel. Built on local expertise.

Fez Excursions began the way most good things in this city do: with someone who knows the way offering to show you. We are a small team of licensed guides, drivers and cooks who were born in Fez or have lived here most of our lives, and we build the trips we would want a friend to have.

What we actually do

We run three kinds of journey, all of them starting at the door of your hotel or riad in Fez. Inside the medina we guide walking days through Fes el-Bali, artisan workshops, food walks and hands-on cooking classes. Out of the city we run one-day trips by private car to Chefchaouen, Volubilis and Meknes, Rabat, and the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas. And we take travelers south to the Sahara, two, three or four days to the dunes of Erg Chebbi at Merzouga, with nights in a traditional desert camp. We also arrange private transfers and airport pickups in Fez, Marrakech, Casablanca and Tangier.

How we work, and why it is different

Everything is private by default, because the medina is better when the group is small enough to fit down a lane and stop when something interesting happens. Nothing is paid online. You send a request, we confirm availability and the full total in writing, and you pay as agreed once you are here. There are no commission stops dressed up as cultural visits: when we take you into a workshop, it is because the craft is worth seeing, and nobody will mind if you buy nothing.

The people you will meet

Our guides are licensed by the Moroccan authorities and work in English, French and Arabic, with other languages available on request. Our drivers are professionals with air-conditioned vehicles and the paperwork to carry you legally. In the desert you travel with Amazigh guides from the Merzouga region who know the dunes in the dark. We pay them properly and work with the same families, camps and cooks year after year, which is the only real guarantee of quality anyone can offer you.

Travelling responsibly

We keep money in the communities we visit by eating in family restaurants, buying from the workshops themselves and using locally owned camps. We ask before photographing people, we do not feed the Barbary macaques in the cedar forest, and we tell you honestly when a trip is too much for the time you have, even when that means recommending a cheaper option than the one you asked about.

Tell us what you want

If none of our excursions is quite right, say so. Most of what we run started as somebody writing to ask whether we could do something slightly different. Send us your dates, your interests and the size of your group, and we will write an itinerary and a price for it.