3 Times When I Was Scammed in Marrakech
Travel scams in Morocco are a HUGE problem! I was scammed over and over again on my first trip to Marrakech, so I wrote this guide to help first-time travelers in Morocco not get scammed! Since my first trip to Morocco, I have traveled the country three more times over the past three years. In my opinion, the scamming has gotten worse, but I have also gotten better at dealing with it.
About Travel Scams In Morocco
Back before I was full-time traveling my friend and I went to Morocco for a week in 2019, where we fell for travel scams over and over. At the time I thought I was a savvy traveler; I had been around Europe, Asia, and a bit of the Middle East; but I was in no way prepared for the aggressive scammers in Marrakech. Guys would stop us in the street and put on Oscar-worthy performances, just trying to scam us out of a buck or two. After the 5th time in an hour of getting outright lied to, I would find myself getting pretty flustered. In hindsight, the “scams’ (or harassment, whatever you want to call them) are pretty humorous, and I want to share a few of them here with you all so you can be prepared on your next trip to Marrakech.
Morocco Travel Scam 1: The Wrong Way Guys
A “wrong way” scam is basically when someone sees a tourist and asks them where they’re trying to go. No matter what the tourist says, the answer is always the same: “oh no, you’re going the wrong way, here follow me”, and the scammer will proceed to lead the tourist to their shop/restaurant, or in more sinister cases somewhere secluded where there are other guys hiding to rob them.
It turned out I had experienced this scam before in Turkey, and maybe one day I’ll write about it here, but in Morocco, they bypass the formality of asking “Where are you going” and just skip telling every tourist they’re going the wrong way.
Walking down the lanes of the souk as an obvious tourist you’ll hear: ‘wrong way miss, wrong way please follow me” every 10 feet. It’s exhausting, especially if you’re not in on the secret and wind up being led in circles. I had a friend who went to Morocco around the same time as me and she didn’t know it was a scam. Some guy told her and her parents they were going the “wrong way” and led them to the leather tannery in Marrakech.
The tannery is a big tourist attraction in Fez, but in Marrakech, the tannery is a stinky secluded place they lead tourists to and then coerce or force them to pay money for a “tour” – if not outright rob them. Scary stuff!
The most impressive experience I had with the wrong-way guy was when I was walking down a main street to Bahia Palace. Some guy on a bike came speeding up behind us and skidded into a stop sideways along the street, blocking our path.
In an agonized scream he shouted “SISTERS! SISTERS PLEASE NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” Like we had just slapped a baby.
My instincts were to just bypass this guy immediately, but my friend is more of a bleeding heart than me and she asked the man what was wrong. The conversation went as follows:
“Please, sisters. PLEASE. Do not walk any farther. You see… you are going the wrong way.”
I think he hid a bit of a smile at that last part, but it might have been my imagination.
He then followed up with:
“This street is sacred my sisters, there is a mosque on this road no non-muslims may pass. You must follow me, sisters, please!!! Quickly!!!”
There were legitimate TEARS appearing in this man’s eyes by this point. Meryl Streep eat your heart out.
Here I need to point out that while Morocco does have specific rules about non-muslims entering mosques, there’s nothing about simply passing one on the street. We saw many Westerners walking ahead of us unmolested, and as I said before this was a main road with lots of foot traffic, so I knew this guy was full of it. I grabbed my friend’s hand and we bypassed the hysterical bicycle man, and wouldn’t you know, there wound up not even being a mosque on that street 🙄.
Morocco Travel Scam 2: Harassment At Jemaa el Fna Night Market
The night market at Jemaa el Fna Square is probably the most popular tourist attraction in Marrakech. There are nicer restaurants with rooftop bars overlooking Jemaa el Fna, and then inside the square, there are snake charmers, henna artists, street performers, and about 50 food stalls (all mostly selling the same thing). It’s (semi) organized chaos, and very fun.
As anywhere else I’ve been where there are lots of food stalls selling the same thing, the sellers are competitive – but the vendors in Marrakech are more aggressive than any I’ve encountered before.
The food stalls all look the same. I had tried to do some research beforehand on Tripadvisor and some people said “You need to go to stall 24!” and others said Stall 12, stall 11, etc. What I’m saying is it doesn’t really seem to matter, they all basically sell the same Moroccan street food.
Even if there was a specific stall I recommend, the hard part would be getting to it. Closely packed together, the food stalls hired touts to draw tourists in. Lots of places do this – hire guys to shout at tourists to come to eat at their restaurant from across the street.
The problem is the proximity of the food stalls and the amount of touts in Jemaa el Fna. From the moment we stepped into the food stall area we were RUSHED by 5-10 touts trying to attract us into their stall. One of them pointed at me and said: “our lamb will help your tits grow!!!!” 🤦🏼♀️ and it somehow only got worse from there!
As I was (literally) being pulled in two directions I screamed “Stop pulling me!” at the touts.
Unbeknownst to me, apparently, they’re not “allowed” to touch the tourists. They still do, but they’re not supposed to.
The tout initially screamed back “SHE’S LYING!!!!”
And then, I guess as a way to undermine the credibility of my accusation, (and the parallels from this to some recent news stories are not lost on me), the tout screamed:
“THIS WOMAN LIKES PENIS!!!” And literally ran away. Like from his job.
So, to sum it up, Jemaa el Fna was exhausting.
We finally got a sausage sandwich at a food stall by just picking a random one and giving up on our journey to specific stalls that were positively reviewed on Tripadvisor.
Insult to injury, the sausage sandwich was gross.
Morocco Travel Scam 3: Just Plain Lying To Tourists
I think this one bothered me the most. Is that irrational? Probably. Basically, if you’re shopping in the souks you will be lied to about what you’re purchasing. Some of this is pretty standard and to be expected: the obviously polyester dress is passed off as silk, the dirty necklace dug up from the back of the store is now a “Berber antique”, but some of the salesman’s lies can be pretty funny.
Right after I arrived in Morocco, jet-lagged and wide-eyed, I was shopping for souvenirs and came across a store that sold leather goods. As I was perusing the stalls the vendor struck up a conversation with me. I wound up telling him I was shopping for my boyfriend and that he loved soccer – He said he had just the thing for me.
The deflated ball he brought from the back of the store wasn’t dyed leather – I think that’s what threw me off. I hope that’s what threw me off because otherwise, I was just being embarrassingly stupid.
The vendor went on about how this was a special soccer ball made of camel leather (I’ve since found out there’s almost no camel leather being sold in Marrakech). He said it was very rare, handmade, etc, etc, etc, and wanted something outrageous like $100 for the thing.
I looked at it and looked at it, and looked at it some more. I was trying to figure out what was throwing me off so much.
It was a volleyball.
The dude was trying to sell me a volleyball as a soccer ball and my dumbass almost couldn’t tell the difference. They really will say anything to get a sale.
