Cleaning in Hivernage, Marrakech

Hivernage does not have the density of Guéliz: it is a planted district of large plots, organised around the conference centre, the Théâtre Royal and avenues lined with orange trees. The building stock falls into three families, and each one dictates a different way of organising the work.

Hotels first — that is the historic identity of the area. Large capacities, lobbies of several hundred square metres, gardens, pools, conference rooms, restaurants and function spaces. Here the client is a technical director or an operations manager, not a private individual.

Then the older villas of the 1930s to 1960s, on large plots, often converted into restaurants, company head offices or private clubs. Solid construction, high volumes, original joinery, and considerable glazed areas inherited from the period.

And finally the serviced residences and upmarket flats — the segment that moves most, with schemes under construction in the district and handovers expected in batches. Whoever takes delivery there is not an isolated buyer but an operator.

The floors follow: marble everywhere in circulation areas, lobbies and hotel bathrooms; wood flooring in the bedrooms and suites of recent schemes; fitted carpet in the corridors and conference rooms of the older stock, which we do not clean; terraces in tile or stone; some zellige — the glazed terracotta mosaic — as decoration around pools and fountains, never as a circulation floor.

After building work, marble, wood and stone are counted at 30 MAD incl. VAT per m², standard tiles at 20 MAD, and the treatment is adapted to the material: not every floor can be crystallised. No traditional floor here is treated the way it would be in a riad, the courtyard house of the medina.

In an operating establishment, a trolley in a corridor, a hose crossing a lobby or a team seen at a guest lift are incidents. Not details: incidents, and they reach the director before the end of the day. That is the structuring constraint of Hivernage, and it comes before any technical discussion.

It translates into a five-point discipline, written down before the work starts:

1. Movement exclusively through the service areas. Suppliers' entrance, service corridors, service lift. No equipment goes through the lobby, nothing is stored anywhere a guest can see it.
2. Room-by-room sequencing on the bedroom floors, on vacated rooms only, with the room put fully back into service before the next one is released.
3. Public spaces outside peak hours: lobby, bar, restaurant, function rooms. The slot is set with the operator and confirmed with our team; our price list carries no time-of-day supplement.
4. Noise kept in bounds. Noisy equipment does not run above an occupied room, and the order in which floors are done takes that into account.
5. Put back into service before opening. Furniture replaced, protection removed, floor dry and usable. A space handed back on time but still damp has not been handed back.

The commercial corollary often comes as a surprise: we plan around the operator's calendar, not our own. In Marrakech, visitor numbers peak in October and then in December; August is a relative trough. So the window for cleaning a refurbished wing or bringing refitted rooms into service is not the one you would assume, and we advise against placing it in high season.

What we do not do, and it needs saying clearly once: no property management, no daily housekeeping. We work after building works, at handover into service, or on one precise item — glazing, bedding, sofas, rugs. The day-to-day servicing of bedrooms stays with the establishment's own staff, and that is exactly as it should be.

The three enquiries that genuinely come out of this district, in this order:

1. Window cleaning. It is the most visible item: lobby glazing, the large windows of the older villas, restaurant shopfronts. In a villa or a suite, 75 MAD incl. VAT per window up to 2 m² and 150 MAD incl. VAT per patio door up to 4 m², accessible frames, tracks and roller shutters included, with a 400 MAD minimum call-out charge; larger panes, common here, are priced on the standard sizes with a top-up checked on photos. A restaurant or a shop is priced as retail: 25 MAD incl. VAT per m² of shop window, 1,000 MAD minimum. On height, the base price applies up to 3 metres, +25% between 3 and 5 metres by pole from the ground, and nothing above that: EPUREVA has neither a cherry picker nor ropes, and does not hire them in. See cleaning large patio doors and window cleaning in Hivernage.
2. Bedding and sofas. Double mattress 400 MAD incl. VAT, single 300 MAD incl. VAT, L-shaped suite sofa 550 to 600 MAD incl. VAT, U-shaped 650 to 750 MAD incl. VAT, rugs 30 MAD incl. VAT per m², textile minimum 400 MAD. Sun cream, drinks, dye transfer: stains trigger no surcharge, but no 100% result is guaranteed, and sun-bleached colour cannot be brought back. Armchairs, banquettes and fitted carpet are not part of what we offer — see mattress cleaning and upholstery in Hivernage.
3. Bringing handed-over batches into service. On serviced residences nearing completion: 30 MAD incl. VAT per m² of marble or wood flooring, 20 MAD incl. VAT on standard tiles, 3,000 MAD minimum per apartment. A 120 m² marble apartment comes to 3,600 MAD incl. VAT; delivered furnished, protection and work around the furniture add 15%, making 4,140 MAD. How handover by batch works is set out on post-construction cleaning in Hivernage, and the whole-establishment case on hotel post-construction cleaning.

Prices incl. VAT, the same across Marrakech, and indicative: they are confirmed after photos or a visit, and no supplement is committed without your agreement.

Vehicle access is easy — wide avenues, delivery bays — but you come in through goods-in, never through the lobby. What gets settled beforehand, and not at the barrier:

• The supplier badge and the named list. Operatives' names, identity documents, vehicle registration, sent in advance to the security department. A team that turns up without having been announced does not get in, and the day is lost.
• The route imposed. Service corridors, goods lift, storerooms. It is checked before the first visit — on photos or on site — to make sure the equipment genuinely fits: door widths, car height, thresholds.
• The water points. Water and electricity are essential, and the operator says where to draw them. In a garden or a patio, that point can be fifty metres from where the work is happening: an extra hose reel and more set-up time.
• Waste water. Discharging into a gully in a guest area is out of the question. Disposal is agreed with the technical services before the first machine runs.
• The order the floors are done in, tied to the schedule of room releases, which is still changing on the morning itself. We work with a margin, not with a fixed plan.

One soiling problem specific to this sector deserves naming: on glazing facing the pool, chlorine spray, sun cream and hand marks lay down a greasy film that resists clear water and shows up against the light by the end of the morning. Left to build up, it puts the glass into the +20% set for very dirty glazing: it is a frequency to hold, not an annual deep clean.

Three documents, every time, and before the first visit.

1. The protocol zone by zone: method, equipment and product chosen, floor by floor, with marble handled separately — test patch approved before anything is rolled out.
2. The sequencing schedule, space by space, with the planned time for each one to be back in service.
3. The control checklist, signed on site at the end of each sequence, with a free return on the point flagged if it is not up to standard.

EPUREVA works with certified products, covers over 195 clients and carries professional liability insurance. Tell us the type of establishment, the areas involved and your operating window, attach 3 to 5 photos, and ask for an estimate; we reply on WhatsApp from seven days a week The other sectors we cover appear on our coverage map.