What are Morocco's best boutique hotels like?

Morocco is, frankly, a boutique-hotel paradise, because the raw material is so good. A boutique hotel here usually means a historic building — a riad, a dar, a kasbah, an old fondouk — restored by an owner with taste and a point of view, kept small at perhaps eight to twenty rooms, and run with the kind of personal service a big hotel can't match. The result is a property that feels like a private home that happens to be impeccable, every room different, the design telling a story rather than following a corporate template. After years of staying in them I still get a small thrill walking through an unassuming medina door into a courtyard that takes your breath away.

The look at the top end is a particular alchemy: traditional Moroccan craft — zellij tile, carved cedar, tadelakt plaster, hand-woven textiles, brass lanterns — married to contemporary comfort and a curator's eye. The best ones have a plunge pool in the courtyard or a rooftop with sunset cocktails over the rooftops, a hammam, a tiny spa, and a kitchen that takes Moroccan cooking seriously rather than serving a tired tourist tagine. Marrakech has the deepest bench, Fes has some jaw-dropping restored palaces, Essaouira does a breezier coastal version, and the Atlas and Skoura have boutique kasbahs with mountain and palm-valley views.

What you're really buying is intimacy and personality. The owner or manager often greets you personally, the staff learn your name by day two, and the recommendations you get — the workshop, the hidden lunch spot, the artisan — are insider rather than generic. The flip side, which I'm always honest about, is the scale: few rooms means they book out months ahead in high season, there's rarely a lift so medina riads mean stairs and your bag carried, and amenities like a gym or a big spa are usually traded away for character. You're choosing soul over facilities.

Price runs the full spectrum. There are gorgeous boutique riads at genuinely mid-range rates if you're flexible on location within the medina, and there are jaw-dropping palaces charging five-star international prices. My advice is to spend on the boutique stay in the cities, where the building and the design are half the experience, and be more relaxed about it on transit nights. And book early — the truly special small properties are the first to vanish from the calendar. For travellers who care about where they sleep, this is Morocco at its most seductive.