Yes, you can hold a working seminar in the Agafay desert, provided you choose a camp designed to host groups. Agafay is a stone desert, not a sand one, which begins less than an hour’s drive from Marrakech. The equipped camps have meeting rooms, catering and tents to sleep in; one of them, Les Terrasses d’Agafay, lists 52 tents and three seminar rooms for 70 to 100 people. Yet the simplest format is still to work in town in the morning and head up to Agafay for the afternoon and evening. The point that drives the budget: hiring a camp is a fixed cost, so the price per participant falls sharply as the group grows.
Agafay or the Sahara: which desert are we talking about?
The two are often confused in enquiries, and for a seminar they have nothing in common. The Sahara of the great dunes, at Merzouga or Zagora, is several hours’ drive from Marrakech: it is an expedition, counted in days in the programme, not hours. Agafay is a rocky plateau on the city’s doorstep, with the Atlas mountains as a backdrop. You go there for half a day or an evening, without losing a working day.
If you are after a dunes experience, that is a separate trip to plan. If you are looking for a setting outside the city for a group that also needs to work, Agafay is the realistic answer.
Day, evening or overnight in a camp: which format for which goal?
There are three formats. They do not require the same logistics and do not serve the same purpose.
| Format | What you do there | What you need to plan |
|---|---|---|
| Afternoon and evening | Workshop or activity late in the day, sunset, dinner, return to town | Return coaches, night-time return with professional drivers |
| Working day | Plenary or workshops in a camp meeting room, lunch, activity | A closed room, power, connectivity, a fallback plan against wind or heat |
| Overnight in camp | Work the day before or after, dinner, night under canvas | Number of tents for single occupancy, heating in winter, luggage |
For most seminars, an afternoon followed by dinner gives you the essence of the setting with the fewest constraints: participants sleep at the hotel, the AV stays in town, and Agafay becomes the high point of the programme. A working day on site makes sense when you want to take the group out of its usual environment for a strategic session. An overnight stay, finally, suits a small group or a team willing to share tents.
Can you really work in a camp?
Yes, in a camp built for it, and only if you check it point by point. Les Terrasses d’Agafay, which we use as an example because its figures are public, advertises professional AV equipment and groups of 30 to 200 people; the visitmarrakech.com portal credits it with three seminar rooms for 70 to 100 people. Not every camp is in this position: a camp set up for a dinner is not a meeting room.
Before choosing a camp for a working day, ask in writing for:
- the room: closed or under canvas, its capacity in your layout (U-shape, classroom or theatre), its light, its temperature at the time of the session;
- power: mains or generator, and what happens in a power cut;
- connectivity: actual speed in the room, and a back-up if you have a video call;
- toilets and a break area close to the room.
On a site with no mains connection, everything runs on generators, and sound has to be sized for an open space: that is why a major projection is safer in town. Group activities, on the other hand, are a natural fit in Agafay; our guide to team building in Marrakech presents several, including quad biking.
How many participants can stay overnight?
This is the sum that camp fact sheets do not do for you. Les Terrasses d’Agafay lists 52 tents and 104 overnight guests, so two people per tent. For a seminar where everyone has their own room, the ceiling is therefore 52 participants, not 104. The same camp lists 250 covers for meals and 200 people for a standing reception: dinner can absorb a large group, the night far less.
The rule applies to every camp: ask for the number of tents, and how many have two separate beds. A group of 80 can have dinner in Agafay, but can only stay the night by sharing tents, or by splitting the group between the camp and a hotel in town. It is exactly the reasoning to follow for a corporate retreat in a Marrakech riad, where the number of bedrooms sets the capacity well before the meeting room does.
How far is it, and how long is the drive?
Agafay begins less than an hour’s drive from central Marrakech, but it stretches over a wide plateau and each camp has its own location. Travel time therefore depends on the camp you choose: Les Terrasses d’Agafay, for example, describes itself as 45 minutes from Marrakech. Add the time it takes to load the coaches, and remember that a group is slower than a car.
That travel time shapes the programme. Based on the 45 minutes this camp gives, a round trip means an hour and a half to two hours of transport for the whole group: half a day in Agafay is built around the journey, not alongside it. For an evening, plan to leave in the late afternoon to arrive before sunset, and a group return at a fixed time rather than people drifting back in twos and threes.
Is it cold in Agafay in the evening?
Yes, for a good part of the year. In Marrakech itself, average lows are about 6 °C in January, 7 to 8 °C in December and February, and around 10 °C in March and November. In the desert, once the sun goes down, it is noticeably cooler than in town. For a winter evening, dinner must be able to take place in a closed tent, with outdoor heaters and blankets; tell participants to bring a warm layer, even if the day has been mild.
Summer raises the opposite problem: Marrakech’s average highs exceed 37 °C in July and August. A working day under canvas becomes hard going; an evening is still possible if you arrive after the heat. The high season for seminars, March to May and September to November, is also the most comfortable time in Agafay.
Is Agafay dangerous?
Google suggests the question as soon as you type “Agafay desert”, and it deserves a factual answer. On its Morocco security page, updated on 15 September 2026, France Diplomatie, the French foreign ministry, advises formally against travel along the border with Mauritania, and calls for heightened vigilance south of the Algerian border and in Western Sahara. The Marrakech region, Agafay included, is in none of these zones.
Two general recommendations on the same page apply directly to a seminar in Agafay. First, it advises against travelling at night: the return from an evening is therefore made with professional drivers and vehicles suited to the group, never in hire cars driven by participants. Second, high-risk activities, with quad biking and car rallies named explicitly, must take into account local emergency capacity that is often limited: choose a provider who supervises, equips and insures participants, and ask for their insurance certificate. The same page also points out that Morocco is in an earthquake zone: the earthquake of 8 September 2023 struck the High Atlas, 70 kilometres south-west of Marrakech, and it recommends knowing what to do in an earthquake.
None of this is specific to Agafay, and none of it rules out holding a seminar there. These are contract points, not reasons to give up.
How much does an evening or a seminar in Agafay cost?
Our costing model, the same as the one behind the online calculator, isolates three items for an evening in Agafay: dinner per person, hire of the venue, which does not depend on the number of guests, and return shuttles. For the evening alone, 10% contingency included:
- 20 participants: around €7,000 to €12,300, or €350 to €620 per person;
- 40 participants: around €8,600 to €14,700, or €220 to €370 per person;
- 100 participants: around €13,200 to €22,000, or €130 to €220 per person.
By comparison, the same evening for 40 people at a hotel comes to around €3,000 to €5,400. Agafay therefore costs more than an evening on site, and the gap narrows as the group grows. Below about twenty participants, a private evening in Agafay weighs heavily on the budget; above forty, it becomes reasonable per head.
In a full seminar for 40 people, in a 4-star hotel with two nights, two working days, AV, one dinner, airport transfers and the evening in Agafay, the total comes to between €22,000 and €36,600, or €550 to €920 per participant. With an evening at the hotel instead, it drops to around €16,400 to €27,300: the Agafay evening therefore adds €5,600 to €9,400 to the seminar. A two-hour quad biking session for 40 participants is costed separately, at around €2,900 to €4,000.
These amounts exclude flights, alcoholic drinks, tourist tax and organisation fees. You can rerun them with your own headcount in our seminar budget calculator; for activity ideas in the desert and the Atlas, see our team building programmes in Marrakech.
Frequently asked questions
How far is the Agafay desert from Marrakech?
Less than an hour’s drive from the centre, depending on the camp. Allow an hour and a half to two hours of transport for the round trip for a group travelling by coach.
Can you hold a 100-person plenary in Agafay?
In some equipped camps, yes: Les Terrasses d’Agafay is listed with rooms for 70 to 100 people. Check the capacity in your layout, the power supply and connectivity before signing.
Can the whole group stay overnight?
It depends on the number of tents. In the camp mentioned, 52 tents allow 52 participants in single occupancy, 104 in shared tents.
Is it cold at night in the Agafay desert?
From November to March, yes: Marrakech’s average lows are between 6 and 11 °C, and the desert is cooler than the city. Plan a closed tent, outdoor heaters and blankets.
Is the Agafay desert dangerous?
The Marrakech region is not in any zone that France Diplomatie advises against or flags for heightened vigilance. The precautions are those for the country as a whole: no night driving by participants, and motorised activities that are supervised and insured.
We select the camp to match your headcount and working programme, organise the transfers and stay on site until the group is back: find out more about our seminar organisation in Marrakech, try different scenarios with the seminar budget calculator, or ask for a free quote with your dates and number of participants.