Christmas and New Year in Marrakech: Staying Connected

Marrakech over the holidays is warm, full and expensive. Daytime temperatures sit around 18–20 °C and nights drop to 5–8 °C. If you are coming from France, the school holidays run from Saturday 19 December 2026 to Monday 4 January 2027 — and unusually, those dates are the same for all three zones, so the whole country travels at once.

What is open

Morocco is a Muslim country and 25 December is a normal working day. Shops, souks, museums and transport all run as usual, which surprises most first-time visitors. Hotels and restaurants aimed at travellers put on Christmas menus and decorations, but it is not a public holiday. 1 January is, so banks and administrative offices close.

The Wi-Fi problem, specifically

This is the pattern we see every December. A family arrives, turns roaming off to avoid charges, and plans to rely on the riad’s Wi-Fi. Then on Christmas afternoon four people want to video-call home at the same time.

Riads are lovely and their Wi-Fi is structurally poor: thick walls, a central courtyard, one router, and every other guest doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same hour. A long video call is roughly 200–300 MB per hour on WhatsApp and more on FaceTime — the heaviest thing most travellers do all trip, landing on the most contended day of the year.

A pocket router is the straightforward fix: unlimited 4G with no daily cap and no throttling, up to 300 Mbps on Maroc Telecom, shared across up to 10 devices. A family of four with two tablets is exactly the shape of group it is built for.

What it costs

A holiday week is €34.30 for the router, whatever the group does with it. There is no per-person charge and no data metering, so nobody has to ration the Christmas call.

Booking notes

For a stay of three weeks or more, or three or more routers, email contact@pocketwifimorocco.com for an individual quote rather than multiplying the daily rate.