Is it cheaper to book a Morocco trip locally or in advance?

The honest answer is that it depends entirely on what you are booking, and the smart traveller does both. For loose, on-the-ground things — a day tour from Marrakech, a cooking class, a market guide, the desert excursion, and certainly souvenirs — you will usually pay less by arranging it locally once you arrive, because you can shop around, haggle, and cut out the online markup. The dozens of agencies on every city street compete hard, and a desert tour booked face-to-face the day before can cost noticeably less than the same trip booked online from home.

Accommodation runs the other way, especially the good riads. The most beautiful and best-value riads are small — sometimes only six or eight rooms — and they sell out, particularly in peak seasons around Easter, Christmas and the pleasant spring and autumn months. Turning up hoping to find a great room cheaply on the day is a gamble that often ends with you in a worse, pricier place because the lovely ones are full. For accommodation I almost always advise booking ahead; you lock in the room you actually want, frequently at a better advance rate, and you remove the stress of arriving somewhere new with nowhere confirmed.

Transport sits in between. Trains cannot really be cheaper booked locally — the fare is the fare — but they are cheap either way and you can simply buy at the station; only at the busiest times is it worth securing a seat ahead. The genuine risk of the book-everything-locally approach is not money but time and certainty: hunting for tours and rooms eats into a short holiday, and if you have only a week or two, the hours spent negotiating on the ground may cost you more in lost sightseeing than you save in dirham.

My honest framework: book the essentials in advance — your riads, anything in peak season, and the whole trip if your holiday is short and you want it seamless — and leave the flexible extras to arrange locally where haggling and competition work in your favour. Travellers with lots of time and a tight budget can lean more on local booking and save real money; those short on time or wanting the best rooms should lock the key pieces ahead. As always, prices and availability move with season and demand, so check current rates before deciding either way.