The Pearl Lounge in the Marrakech airport is a welcome respite after the cattle drive of entering RAK, but it’s definitely not worth paying for entry if yours isn’t complimentary.
Table of Contents
Getting Through the Marrakech Airport
As you will probably read elsewhere on the internet, the Marrakech Menara Airport is a mess of inefficiency. For our international flight, we had to queue a total of 7 times.
- There’s a queue for the x-ray scanners to get into the airport; these are for safety but the lines were LONG at 7am. We were lucky that they opened a new entrance right next to us and we were able to cut our wait time in half.
- Mobile boarding passes are not issued at this airport. Every passenger must get in line at the check-in desk to obtain their boarding pass, regardless of whether they are checking a bag. You’re also waiting in line behind others who are checking multiple pieces of baggage.
- The next queue was for an officer to look at your boarding pass to make sure you’re going through the right security line.
- Then you wait to scan your boarding pass in order to enter the security line.
- Standard security queue, which actually moved pretty quickly.
- Passport control: these officials move like the sloth in Zootopia. There’s no rhyme or reason as to when they’ll call you forward and when they’ll decide to take a ten minute break on their cell phones.
- A final queue to make sure that the border control official stamped your passport. At this location there were two lines but everyone followed each other into one single line. My brother noticed and we jumped that huge queue.
The whole process took about an hour and a half at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday. I’m used to TSAPrecheck and Global Entry in the US, so it’s the longest security process I’ve been through in a while. After so many seemingly unnecessary bottlenecks, we were more than ready to escape the crowd.
The Pearl Lounge
Location
The Pearl Lounge is in the international terminal of Marrakech Medina airport. It is located at the top of the escalator after the final queue mentioned above, to the left near the duty-free. The lounge was largely empty when we arrived at 8:30am on a Tuesday. It filled up a little bit before we left at 10, but never felt crowded.
Unfortunately, the lounge is not closed off from the rest of the airport. The announcements at RAK airport are obnoxiously loud, so much that at the gate we had to shout to hear each other over them. They’re also constant. While the lounge is slightly quieter than the gate areas, it’s only barely. Don’t plan to get much sleep anywhere in this airport–even with my Loop earplugs in, the announcements were so loud.
Sitting Area
The furniture is clean and comfortable, and the design is aesthetically pleasing. There are a series of sleep pods with reclining sofas that I absolutely would have taken advantage of if traveling alone, but they’re a little worse for wear.
Food and Drinks
The food was among the sparsest I’ve seen. Only carbs were available: three small serving platters of croissants and breads. There were packages of jelly and butter, but nothing else. The breads could be microwaved if you wanted it warmed.
No alcoholic drinks were offered.
There was an espresso vending machine attended by an employee; the latte was fine but tasted like vending machine coffee. There was also a fridge full of bottled water and various soft drinks.
Facilities
The bathrooms were among the worst I’ve seen in a Priority Pass lounge. The female bathrooms were clean enough to use, but the lights in the sink area and the shower area were both out of order. My brother reported that the men’s bathrooms smelled, although the lights did work.
My sister used the shower in the dark. She was provided a towel, and there was a wall dispenser of shower gel. The shower area was large and there was space for your bag out of reach of the water. Had the lights worked, it may have been an enjoyable experience.
In Overview
The Pearl Lounge is a somewhat quieter and more comfortable place to sit than what is available in other areas of Marrakech Medina Airport, but don’t expect to be pampered or fed. I would not recommend paying for entry if yours isn’t complimentary through a membership. Amenities and food are sparse.