How to plan a Morocco trip from New Zealand?

I won't sugar-coat it for my New Zealand guests: getting to Morocco from Aotearoa is one of the longest trips a traveller can take, and planning around that reality is the single most important thing we do. You're looking at 30-plus hours of total travel and an 11 to 12 hour time difference, which is about as severe as jet lag gets. Because of that, I flatly refuse to plan anything under two weeks — fourteen days is my minimum, and many of my Kiwi guests happily stretch to eighteen or twenty-one to make the epic journey count.

For routing, the Gulf carriers are the heroes again. Qatar Airways runs one of the world's longest flights nonstop from Auckland to Doha, then a short hop into Casablanca — that's often the cleanest two-leg option. Emirates via Dubai is the main alternative, sometimes with a touchdown in Australia. You can also route through Asia (Singapore, Kuala Lumpur) and then onward to a Gulf hub or Istanbul, which is handy if you want to break the trip in Southeast Asia. Whatever the path, Casablanca is the gateway and the place I have most Kiwi guests begin.

Here's the advice that changes the whole experience: build in a deliberate stopover. Rather than enduring 30 hours straight and arriving wrecked, I have New Zealand guests spend a night or two in Doha, Dubai, Singapore or Istanbul on the way over. It halves the brutality of the journey, lets your body start adjusting, and turns dead transit time into a mini-holiday. On the way home, the time shift works slightly in your favour, but I still suggest a buffer day before going back to work.

On visas, New Zealand passport holders have enjoyed visa-free entry to Morocco for tourist stays of up to 90 days, so the bureaucracy is mercifully light for such a far-flung trip — passport valid six months, onward ticket, first-night booking. As ever, confirm the current rule with Moroccan authorities before booking. Given how far you've come, I lean into the bucket-list version of Morocco: a luxury Sahara camp, the blue lanes of Chefchaouen, a few days on the Atlantic, and enough slow time that the journey feels unquestionably worth it.