How do I plan a group trip to Morocco?

The first thing I tell anyone planning a group trip — six, ten, twenty people — is that the trip lives or dies on having one organiser. Not a committee, one person who is the single point of contact between the group and me. I have run trips where five people each emailed me slightly different versions of the plan, and it is chaos for everyone. Pick the friend who is naturally organised, make them the funnel, and let them collect everyone's passport details, dietary needs, arrival flights and the deposit. Everything downstream gets easier the moment that role is clear.

Lock two things early even if the rest is fuzzy: your travel dates and a rough headcount. Morocco's good riads and the best private driver-guides get booked months ahead in the spring and autumn peaks, and group-sized space — a whole riad, a small coach — is the first thing to sell out. I would rather take a "ten to twelve people, second week of October" booking and refine it later than wait for everyone to confirm. A deposit holds the vehicle and the beds; the precise rooming list can come together over the following weeks.

For movement, the single best decision a group can make is a private driver-guide with a vehicle sized to the group — a minivan for up to eight, a small coach above that. Trying to coordinate trains, grand taxis and the inevitable stragglers across a country this big, with this many people, is exhausting and eats your holiday. One vehicle, one driver who knows the roads and the rhythm, luggage handled, and the group arrives everywhere together. It costs more per head than going DIY, but for a group it is genuinely the difference between a trip and an ordeal.

Finally, build deliberate slack into the itinerary. The mistake groups make is scheduling every hour, which works for nobody once you have a range of ages, energy levels and interests in the mix. I always design group trips with anchor experiences everyone does together — the desert camp, a cooking class, a guided medina walk — and then genuine free afternoons where the hammam crowd, the shopping crowd and the nap-on-the-rooftop crowd can each do their own thing and reconvene for dinner. That breathing room is what keeps a group of friends still friends by day seven.