Where to stay in Agadir: the best areas and resorts

Agadir’s beach is the main event: kilometres of firm golden sand curving around the bay, wide enough for football matches, camel rides and sunbeds without anyone treading on anyone else. A paved promenade runs behind it, busy with walkers and joggers from breakfast until well after dark, and the big resort hotels line up along it facing the Atlantic.

This is classic fly-and-flop territory. Most hotels here are all-inclusive or offer it, with several pools, gardens, tennis courts and evening entertainment, and a gate that opens straight onto the sand. Families are well looked after, and couples who want none of it can book the adults-only option. The city centre is about a kilometre from most front doors, close enough for an evening stroll.

Just behind the northern end of the beach, the tourist quarter is where Agadir comes closest to bustle. The streets here are lined with cafés, grills, bars and shops, the fishing port is around a kilometre away, and the ruined kasbah watches over it all from its hilltop. It is not beautiful, exactly, but it is easy, friendly and everything is on foot.

Hotels are a notch cheaper than on the front and usually only 100 to 300 metres from the sand. Expect big pools in mature gardens, hammams and spas, and often a children’s play area or kids’ pool. Choose this part of town if you like to eat somewhere different every night, or want nightlife within stumbling distance. Choose elsewhere if silence after ten matters to you.

Follow the promenade south and the hotels thin out, the gardens get bigger and the mood drops a gear. Founty is the newer half of Agadir’s seafront, a planned district of low-rise resorts, apartment hotels and villas, most within a few hundred metres of the sand. The beach here is just as wide as in town, with rather fewer people on it.

This is where to look for spa and thalassotherapy hotels, Berber-inspired design and apartments with terraces facing the sea, and it suits couples and families who rate space above nightlife. Golfers are well placed too: Agadir’s courses are within about seven kilometres. The city centre is a fifteen-minute walk from the nearer hotels, or a very cheap taxi from the rest.

About 17 km north of Agadir, Taghazout Bay is Morocco’s newest resort: a purpose-built stretch of five-star hotels spaced out along a broad, breezy beach, with an 18-hole golf course on the bluff behind and the surf village of Taghazout just up the shore. It feels a world away from the city. The Atlantic is livelier here, the horizon emptier and the architecture sharper.

Expect big-name hotels with multiple pools, serious spas, private beach sections and a choice of restaurants, including a large all-inclusive. It suits couples, golfers and families who are happy to stay in resort for most of the week. If you want to walk out of the gate to a row of local restaurants, stay in Agadir; here you will mostly eat in or take a taxi.

The coast road north of Agadir is surf country. Anza, Tamraght and the old fishing village of Taghazout sit beside a run of point and beach breaks that draw surfers from across Europe every winter. The villages are scruffy, sociable and good fun, with board-hire shops, juice bars and cafés where the day’s waves are discussed at length.

Places to stay range from simple surf houses with shared terraces to a full-scale surf, yoga and spa resort with direct access to the beach, about 25 minutes’ drive from the city. Lessons and board hire are easy to arrange wherever you sleep. Come for the waves and the easy company. Sun-lounger traditionalists will be happier back in the bay.