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Tipping in Morocco is customary, appreciated and blessedly low-pressure — closer to rounding up than to American percentages. Here is the working etiquette, situation by situation, so generosity lands right without anxiety.
Daily life
Cafés: round up or leave the small coins. Restaurants: 5–10% for table service if no service charge appears; more is a compliment, not an obligation. Petit taxis: round up to the note. Porters and parking guardians: a few dirhams — the ubiquitous gilet-wearing gardien is a real (informal) job, and the coins keep your car watched.
Travel services
Riad staff: a shared tip at checkout, sized to the stay, thanks the whole invisible team. Licensed guides: for a good full day, a tip in the tens of dirhams per person upward reads as sincere thanks. Drivers on multi-day circuits: the custom is a per-day amount handed at journey’s end — our travellers usually ask us privately for the current norms, and we tell them straight (ask on plan your journey; there is no wrong question).
The etiquette details
Tip in cash, in dirhams, hand-to-hand with a thank-you — shukran does real work. Nobody chases a tip here, and nobody should perform gratitude for one; if service disappointed, a modest round-up and honest feedback beat theatrical withholding.
The going rates, dirham by dirham
Keep it simple: café — leave 2–5 dirhams with the bill; restaurant — around 10% when service isn’t included (check the bill; it sometimes is); petit taxi — round up to the next 5 dirhams; hotel porter — 10–20 dirhams a bag-load; housekeeping — about 20 dirhams a day, left visibly on the pillow; hammam attendant — 20–50 dirhams after a scrub; private driver — 100–200 dirhams per day from the whole group, at the end of the trip; city guide — 150–250 dirhams for a full day, adjusted for how good the day actually was. These are courtesies, not obligations — nobody reputable will chase you for them.
The practical part: carry small money
Tipping culture runs on coins and 20-dirham notes, and the ATM’s 200-dirham bills are useless for it. Break big notes early — buy the water, the oranges, the msemen — and keep a pocket of change separate from your main cash. How to get dirhams sensibly in the first place is covered in our money guide.
When not to tip
Unrequested “help” is not a service: the man who walks you to the square you were already facing, the spontaneous parking guardian of a car you didn’t park. A polite la, shukran and forward motion settle both.
What is already included
On our private circuits everything contractual is in the price — tips remain entirely optional and entirely yours, which is exactly how the tradition works best. The wider courtesies live in the etiquette FAQ.
Tipping questions usually travel with two others: Marrakech taxi tips — the petit-taxi meter rules — and is Marrakech expensive, our line-by-line price table for 2026.
Everything on this page can be woven into a private itinerary — start from the travel FAQ, and we shape the rest around you.
Anas Benjelloun — Anas covers the practical side of travelling in Morocco — money, SIM cards, taxis, scams to sidestep, what things cost and when to book. He updates his pages the boring way, by checking, and takes a quiet pride in the fact that his airport-to-medina instructions have never stranded anyone. If a price appears in one of his articles, he has paid it recently.
