Mövenpick Mansour Eddahbi Marrakech

The Mövenpick Mansour Eddahbi is a heavyweight of Hivernage: 503 rooms, a Congress Palace next door, wide gardens and several pools. This is the class of large international hotels, not human-scale houses. The address runs to the rhythm of conferences and groups as much as families, and the architecture, functional, does not try to rival a riad. What you come for is something else: space, services, and a location hard to beat.

The real strength is the setting. A hundred metres from the Congress Palace, on Avenue Mohammed VI, the hotel puts the medina and the Koutoubia ten minutes’ walk away, and Jemaa el-Fna a touch further. For a place this size, that is rare: you come back on foot after a day in the souks instead of depending on a taxi. The rest follows the urban resort format: a full spa, the Ô de Rose centre with separate men’s and women’s hammams, five restaurants, a kids’ club and balcony rooms. Travellers back it widely (8.6 on Booking, on more than 1,800 reviews), with a special mention for the location.

The trade-off is that of all conference hotels: charm is standardised. Long corridors, busy lobby, an atmosphere that depends on the occupancy rate and the groups on site - you are far from the intimacy of a medina riad. Value for money is the lowest score travellers leave. It is the accepted compromise of this address, and it lands right for the traveller who wants it: families, business travellers, practical stays where you sleep central without going broke. From around £94 a night, this is one of the most accessible entries into a Marrakech 5-star - a logic shared by other family-focused addresses.