Budget 400 to 600 dirhams a day per person for a mid-range trip, and take more cash than you think you need once you leave the cities. That covers meals, taxis, entrance fees and tips, but not accommodation or tours, which are usually paid separately.
The dirham is a closed currency: you cannot buy it before you arrive and you cannot legally take much of it home. Plan to change money in Morocco and to spend what you have.
What things actually cost
| Mint tea in a cafe | 10 to 20 DH (1 to 2 EUR) |
| Street food meal | 20 to 40 DH (2 to 4 EUR) |
| Restaurant main course | 60 to 120 DH (6 to 12 EUR) |
| Dinner in a riad | 150 to 300 DH (15 to 30 EUR) |
| City taxi ride | 20 to 50 DH (2 to 5 EUR), agreed before you set off |
| Museum or monument entry | 40 to 100 DH (4 to 10 EUR) |
| Bottled water, 1.5L | 6 to 10 DH |
| Tip, full day guide | 100 to 150 DH per group, not per person |
Ten dirhams is roughly one euro, which makes the arithmetic easy: move the decimal point one place.
How much cash to carry
In Marrakech, Casablanca or Fes, cards work in restaurants, hotels and larger shops, and cash machines are everywhere. You can travel on very little cash.
Outside them, that changes fast. Machines thin out on the desert routes and disappear entirely between towns. A village cooperative, a mountain lunch, a roadside stop and a camel handler are all cash. On a three day desert trip, take enough for the whole circuit before you leave Marrakech, because there is no reliable machine between Ouarzazate and Merzouga.
A working rule: 1 000 to 1 500 dirhams in cash for a multi-day trip into the south, in small notes. Two hundred dirham notes are hard to break in a village.
Where to change money
| Bank or official bureau | Best rate. Bring your passport. Open bank hours only |
| Airport | Convenient, poorer rate. Change a small amount to get you into the city, no more |
| Cash machine | Good rate, but your own bank’s fees apply. Decline the machine’s own conversion offer |
| Hotel or riad | Usually the worst rate. A last resort |
| Street exchange | Illegal and where the counterfeit notes are. Never |
Keep the receipt when you change money: you need it to convert dirhams back at the end, and there is a limit on how much you can take out of the country.
Paying for a tour
The usual pattern with a local operator is a deposit to confirm the date and the balance paid on the day. The deposit secures the vehicle and takes the departure off the calendar, so it is rarely refundable at short notice. The balance is often cash, sometimes card, and it is worth asking which before you arrive rather than on the morning.
Two questions decide what a price actually compares to: is lunch included, and are entrance fees included. Two tours advertised at the same figure can differ by several hundred dirhams a day once those are added. Each trip on our tour list states what is in and what is not.
Cards, fees and what not to do
Visa and Mastercard are widely accepted in cities, American Express much less so. Contactless works in the larger places.
When a machine or a card terminal offers to charge you in your home currency, decline it. That is dynamic currency conversion, and the rate is always worse than your own bank’s. Always choose to be charged in dirhams.
Tell your bank you are travelling. A card blocked on the first day in a country where you cannot get the currency in advance is a genuinely bad afternoon.
Bargaining, without the folklore
Prices in the souks are expected to move, and the exercise is a conversation rather than a contest. Go slowly, keep it light, and walk away without hard feelings if the number does not work. Both sides know the game.
What does not bargain: a restaurant bill, a museum ticket, a supermarket, a taxi with a meter running, and a fixed-price cooperative in the mountains. Trying to haggle in those places reads as odd rather than shrewd.
The short version
Change money at a bank, not the airport. Carry small notes. Take enough cash for the whole circuit before heading south. Always pay in dirhams, never in your own currency. And ask what a tour price includes before comparing it to another one.
The rest of what people ask before booking is in our Morocco travel tips, and the tipping scale has its own page: how much to tip in Morocco.
