Hotel Des Iles in Essaouira

The Hotel des Iles has an excellent location, sitting as it does just across a road from the beach, only a couple of minutes walk to an entrance into the medina and not much more to the famous Squala fort by the port of Essaouira. It is a very nice 4* hotel in a splendid building set in nice grounds with a lovely big swimming pool. I did however feel that the outside looks tired and is in need of a facelift (repainting) and that paint flaking off the wooden guard rail on the balcony of our room so that too is in really urgently in need of re-painting. There was also a crack in the glass of the balcony door. Our room was comfortable, nice furniture and an excellent bed. The other facilities in it such as the bathroom were fine except that the both the toilet seat and cistern were loose. We managed with that but they should be looked at soon and fixed. We had a nice view from the room but the main window with a view of the Squala fort was very dirty and so marred that view. Despite reporting the window to the concierge, no one bothered to come to clean it in the seven days that we were there. At night the big window rattled a bit too. As to other services, we found that the internet in our part of the hotel was very poor, having no connection most of the time and also the TV had a very poor reception. We were however able to connect on the ground floor and the TV both in the main lounge and the bar outside did have a good picture too. I found it surprising that there was no little safe in the room which is very common to most hotels and that there was no “Do not Disturb / Please clean the room” notice to hang on the door, resulting in the chambermaid coming to do her work before we left the room for the day. Not her fault and not embarrassing but a door card would have been handy. The staff are very pleasant and the services offered here, such as breakfast and evening meal are ok. Breakfast was certainly not bad, but the buffet in the evening which we only tried twice in our stay little uninspiring, having I thought a fairly limited choice of dishes when compared to many of the other hotels and resorts around the world. The pool is very nice. It is quite big and when we were there, very quiet. Only a very few other guests used it, so we were alone there most of the time which was so peaceful. We were surprised to discover that the hotel does not supply towels for the pool and so we had to take bath towels from the room every time that we went for a swim. That put an extra strain on us having dry towels available when we wanted to shower and took a day or so to resolve. Over all however despite the points that I have brought attention to, we did enjoy our stay at this rather nice hotel. we really enjoyed the ambience and the good location. Our time spent relaxing at the pool and the overall comfort of the accommodation and surroundings.

This hotel is well located just across from the seafront in Essaouira and only a few minutes walk away from the harbour and the the alleys of the old town. It's clearly been a grand hotel in its day. The main building has original features. We were accommodated in one of the bungalows around the pool and garden area. These buildings were probably state of the art when they were build but are now showing their age. They are in need of a refresh to bring them into the modern era. Bedding, towels, etc were clean. We had a couple of evening meals here, and breakfasts. These were OK.