Hotel of the Week: The New Royal Mansour Casablanca Blends Moroccan Luxury with Cultural Heritage

Now it has a big-city sister: the just-opened 149 room Royal Mansour Casablanca, which occupies an elegant high-rise building in the heart of Morocco’s largest city and business capital. As the second address of the Royal Mansour collection, it has the same aspirations as the original hotel in Marrakech—to dispense indigenous Moroccan luxury and aesthetics, but not only to the corporate high-fliers who are the obvious audience for the property. Instead, the Royal Mansour Casablanca also wants to put its namesake city on the map for travelers visiting Morocco.  

To accomplish this, it proposes a variety of bespoke visits to discover this fascinating seaside city. Beyond a guided tour of the Old Medina and the Hassan II Mosque—the largest in Africa—other fascinating tours are themed around the city’s art-deco architecture or thriving street-arts scene. One way or another, the new hotel makes for a pretty swell place to get home to after a day out. 

The sumptuous lobby dazzles with its warm array of paneling using many different rich marbles, along with opulent flower arrangements and a giant aquarium populated by fish from the Amazon River. And yet the color scheme is a distinctively Moroccan palate of sand, mustard, burnt orange, olive green, ash gray and cinnamon, and the sleek lines of the furniture are inspired by the art-deco that is a visual signature of Casablanca. 

Rooms are spacious and come with beautiful custom inlaid-wood credenzas, side tables, and desks, as well as large well-lit closets with many built-ins and white marble baths.

The hotel’s excellent sushi bar and French restaurant, La Brasserie, which is run by Paris chef Eric Frechon, are  just off the hotel’s lobby, while Le Rooftop—a lively bar and very good casual dining restaurant with a modern Mediterranean menu—and La Table Marocaine are located on the 30th floor. The hotel also has an indoor infinity pool, fitness center and two-story spa offering a variety a traditional Moroccan hammam and a variety of other treatments. So here’s looking at you, kid!