What's the deal with rooftop 'viewpoint' tips — and the tip they expect?

Morocco's medinas are low and labyrinthine, so a rooftop view is genuinely magical — over the dye-pits of the Fes tannery, across the rooftops to the Koutoubia, or down into Jemaa el-Fna at sunset. Naturally, locals have monetised this. Someone will offer to take you to 'the best viewpoint, very famous, you'll love it', and walk you up some stairs. The view is often real and worth seeing. The catch is what's at the top and what's expected on the way down.

Almost always, the rooftop is the terrace of a shop — leather in Fes, carpets or lamps elsewhere — or a café, and 'free' really means 'tip plus a browse through the merchandise'. That's not outrageous: the person showed you something nice and the shop is lending you its roof. But it's presented as a spontaneous favour when it's a routine with a price tag. If you climb up expecting nothing and get hit with both a sales floor and a pointed wait for a tip, that mismatch is what sours people.

There's also a thinner version to watch for, where the 'viewpoint' is underwhelming — a so-so angle over a wall — and the whole point was simply to extract a tip or funnel you into the shop. And occasionally the rooftop café is real and charges a fair price for a drink, which is honestly the cleanest version of the deal: you pay for a mint tea, you get the view, everyone's clear on the terms. Context tells you which one you're in.

My advice: if someone offers a rooftop, it's fine to accept — just ask the magic question first, 'is there a charge or a tip?', so the terms are agreed up front rather than sprung on you. If you accept, 10–20 dirhams to whoever showed you is fair and generous; you're under no obligation to buy anything from the shop, and 'just the view, thank you, not shopping today' is completely acceptable. Better still, seek out the well-known rooftop cafés yourself — Café des Épices or Le Jardin in Marrakech, the terraces around the Fes tannery — where you buy a drink, the view's included, and nobody's hovering for a tip.