For companies, and the people who run them
The offsite your team
will still talk about in March.
Marrakech is three hours from most of Europe and an hour from Casablanca. We hold the week: a riad in the medina, two nights under the Agafay sky, a working block every morning, and an afternoon that belongs to the terrain. You bring the people and the agenda.
What most offsites get wrong
The usual Marrakech seminar is a hotel meeting room, a gala dinner and a go-kart afternoon. People come home tired, with photos, and nothing has moved.
The room is the problem
A windowless conference room in a five-star hotel is still a windowless room. Decisions need light, silence and a horizon, and the desert supplies all three.
The schedule is the problem
Twelve hours of sessions produce the same outcome as six. We put the work in the morning, when people can think, and give the afternoon to the terrain, which is where the team actually forms.
The body is the problem
Nobody decides well on four hours of sleep and airport food. Movement before the heat, bread from the village oven, a night in a camp with no lights: your team comes back with its judgment intact.
Three ways companies escape with us
The same week, sized to three different rooms.
The leadership escape, three days
Founders, executive committees and boards. Fly from Marrakech into the Sahara, one place, one silence, one decision. Six to twelve people, and the diary is the only constraint.
The team escape, four nights
Marrakech, then the Agafay desert. A working block each morning, the terrain each afternoon, a table every evening. Eight to twenty people, the size at which a week still does what it is meant to.
Larger companies, in cohorts
Above twenty, we run the same week as successive cohorts across a season rather than one large event. Slower than a two-hundred-person gala, and it is the version people remember.
What a day looks like
Not a bootcamp and not a spa. The work sits where people can think, and the terrain sits where it does its work.
Before the heat
Mobility, breath or a walk out of the door. Optional, and about half the room comes. Breakfast that nobody eats at a desk.
The working block
Three hours, one room with a horizon, screens only if the work needs them. This is the block you came for, and it is the only one.
The terrain
A walk with a nomad family, the village oven, the souk with someone who grew up in it, or nothing at all. The middle of the day belongs to nobody.
The table and the sky
One long table, Moroccan food cooked by people who learned it from their mothers, and a sky with no light for a hundred kilometres.
How it works, and what it does not include
One counterpart from the first call to the last transfer. Your flights and insurance stay yours, and we say so rather than hiding them in a line.
One proposal, one point of contact
You brief one person. The riad, the camp, the vehicles, the cooks, the guides and the schedule arrive as one proposal, and the same person is on the ground all week.
The ground is ours
Every transfer, driver and vehicle from the moment your people land. The places are chosen and tested by us, and we hold the Moroccan operator licence under law 11-16.
The agenda is yours
If the week carries real deliverables, a second working block replaces an afternoon on the terrain, and we tell you which days can hold one and which cannot.
The questions a finance director asks
Written down, so that nobody has to ask them twice.
A per-person proposal
You receive one proposal per person for the format you choose, with everything on the ground included. Prices are not published here because no two weeks are the same size or the same season.
Eight to ten months ahead
Good places in good seasons are held early. A leadership escape can be built in six weeks; a team week is best held two seasons out.
When to come
October to April for the desert and the Atlas. March to June and September to November for the coast. Summer in the south is best avoided for working weeks.
What stays with you
International flights, travel insurance and visas belong to each traveller. We help with the rest and do not pretend otherwise.
Company offsite in Marrakech: the questions we are asked
- Is this a corporate offsite or a wellness retreat?
- Both, and deliberately. The mornings are working sessions with a real agenda; the afternoons, the food and the sleep are handled so that the sessions are worth something. It is not a spa week and not a bootcamp.
- How many people can a Marrakech offsite take?
- Eight to twenty for a team week, six to twelve for a leadership escape. Above twenty we run successive cohorts across a season rather than one large event.
- Where does the week take place?
- A riad in the Marrakech medina for the first nights, then the Agafay desert forty minutes away, under canvas with proper beds. The three-day leadership format flies from Marrakech into the Sahara.
- Can we hold working sessions during the week?
- Yes, every morning, in a room with a horizon rather than a conference room. If the week carries deliverables, a second block replaces an afternoon on the terrain.
- Who do we contract with?
- One counterpart for the whole week: one proposal, one point of contact on the ground. Umnya holds the Moroccan operator licence under law 11-16 and tells you in writing what sits with us and what stays with each traveller.
- How far ahead do we need to plan?
- A leadership escape can be built in six weeks. A team week in a good season is best held eight to ten months ahead, because the places we use are small and fill early.
From the Journal
8 min read
What a Ground Operator Actually Does, and What You Still Have to Do
The licence, the vehicles, the permits and the lead on the ground are the operator's role. The teaching, the community and the promise made to it are still entirely yours.
8 min read
Choosing Between a Hotel Partner and an Owned Camp
A hotel gives you beds, a kitchen and a rate card, and gives your dates to whoever confirms first. An owned place gives you the calendar and the privacy, and asks you to trust one operator.
8 min read
Filling a Retreat from a Small Community: The Arithmetic Nobody Publishes
Follower count says nothing about who will pay to travel. Attendance at your own paid events does. Here is the arithmetic that actually fills a retreat, and what to do at week four.
Tell us the season, the size and the reason.
One call, and a proposal within the week. No deck, no questionnaire.
Start the conversation→Before the dates exist
Tell us when. We will tell you where.
We open a small number of weeks each season. Choose the window you have in mind and what you come for, and you will hear about those dates before they are published.
Which window?
What you come for