Cleaning in Ménara, Marrakech

Ménara occupies the south-west of Marrakech, around the historic gardens and basin, the avenue Mohammed VI and the airport. Open ground, olive groves, major roads, low building density compared with the centre. It is a sector you cross more than one you live in.

The dominant stock is functional before it is residential: hotels and tourist residences along the avenues, vehicle hire agencies, roadside restaurants and cafés, business units tied to the airport, shops at the foot of buildings. Added to that are recent four- and five-storey residences and estates set back from the road, between which plots of olive grove remain undeveloped.

The floors follow that vocation: large-format porcelain in commercial units and recent housing, marble in hotel and residence lobbies, polished concrete in contemporary restaurant concepts. Around them, large external areas — car parks, forecourts, café terraces — of which only the terraces fall within what we clean. Historic materials are absent.

That imbalance governs everything else. In a residential district, you clean a house when the family moves in. Here, you clean premises when an operator is about to open, and that difference changes the contact, the vocabulary, the order of operations and the penalty for running late.

There is a moment in the life of new premises that almost nobody deals with: the point where the main contractor has folded up the scaffolding and the operator has not yet opened. The building is finished; it is not usable. That is the heart of our work in Ménara, and what the price per m² covers is very concrete:

• floors and skirtings, including the small marks of cement, paint or adhesive left by the trades;
• the accessible windows of the unit;
• toilets and washrooms, for customers and staff alike;
• the stairs, up to the mezzanine or the upper floor;
• a check of the finish before we hand back the keys.

What it does not cover: clearing out boxes and offcuts, sanding, repairing a joint or a skirting. Rubble and packaging have to have left the premises before we arrive — we do not clear out.

And the date matters more than the list. We come once every trade has finished: premises where the electrician or the kitchen fitter comes back after us get dirty again, and a visit after new works is not included. So the operator faces two choices, and each has a price:

1. Empty or furnished. Furniture delivered wrapped, then unwrapped on site, calls for protection and working around the pieces: +15% on the base price. Coming before the delivery costs less, provided no trade comes back afterwards.
2. A few marks, or many. A few small marks are in the price; many marks, a longer clean, +20%; thick residue on almost every surface, +40%, with a diagnosis on photos.

One last point, the one that really sets this district apart: the opening date does not move. Staff have been hired, a campaign has been launched, sometimes a launch event is booked. So we only confirm a date after photos or a visit of the premises and the real programme — never on a description over the phone.

Three items cover most of what this sector asks for, at the same incl. VAT prices as everywhere in Marrakech.

1. The premises themselves. 20 MAD per m² on standard tiles, 30 MAD per m² on marble, polished concrete, stone or wood; an unidentified floor counts at 30 MAD per m², adjusted after photos. A restaurant, an agency or a showroom comes under the shop or office minimum, 3,000 MAD: a 120 m² agency on standard tiles comes to 2,400 MAD of line items, brought up to 3,000 MAD. The sequence is on resetting commercial premises; for the estates set back from the road, see resetting a villa, 7,500 MAD minimum.
2. Shop windows. 25 MAD per m² of shop window, both sides included, 15 MAD per m² for the glass inside the unit, 1,000 MAD minimum per shop; a flat fascia sign no more than a metre high, 100 MAD per metre of length, 200 MAD minimum. Windows marked with paint, adhesive or cement take +40%, and some marks may remain depending on the glass. In hotel and residence lobbies we wash up to 3 m from the ground at the base price, between 3 and 5 m by pole at +25% if the photos allow it, and nothing higher: neither a cherry picker nor ropes — the detail is on pole work from the ground. Office floors are washed on the inside only, 15 MAD per m² of glass faces, 500 MAD minimum.
3. The café or restaurant terrace. It is added to the clean of the premises: 10 MAD per m² on standard tiles, 30 MAD per m² on any other surface. It is often the largest surface an establishment in this sector has, and the one most often forgotten in an opening estimate. Car parks and forecourts are not part of what we offer.

Indicative prices, confirmed after photos or a visit of the premises; no supplement is committed without your agreement.

Access is the easiest in the local silo: major roads, room to manoeuvre, easy parking away from the immediate airport surroundings, no carrying constraint. The constraints are elsewhere, and they are of two kinds.

Climatic first. The sector is very exposed to the west wind and to the dust lifted off the olive grove and the undeveloped plots. A shopfront that is immaculate on Monday carries a mineral veil by Thursday, especially in low light. Two practical consequences:

• the glazing of new premises is scheduled as close as possible to the opening, not three weeks before, or it has to be done again — and the second visit is paid like the first;
• premises open on this axis need closer visits than in the city centre. The price of a visit does not change; what costs is letting it slide, because a heavily soiled shop window takes +20%.

Operational next. Restaurants and agencies run continuous hours: the work is fitted in before opening or after closing, and the slot chosen is written on the quotation. On a bare shell, two points are checked before the vehicle is loaded: whether water and electricity are genuinely connected — often not, on premises handed over just after the structural works — and whether the waste water outlet is usable.

A temporary site supply will not run a rotary machine or a hot-water extraction unit, and without water and power on the day, we cannot do the job.

What we commit to in writing, and what we refuse to commit to.

1. The scope and the supplements appear on the quotation: what is included, what is not, and every percentage applied. That document is what stops you discovering, on opening day, that a terrace or a high lobby was never priced.
2. The test patch on a sensitive substrate — polished concrete, marble, polished porcelain — is treated, dried and approved before anything is rolled out. The treatment is matched to the material: not every floor can be crystallised.
3. The handover checklist is signed on site, unit by unit, with a free return on the point flagged if it is not up to standard. On an opening, an unresolved snag costs more than a return visit.
4. We only confirm a date after photos or a visit. A commitment made on a description over the phone is not a commitment, it is a bet — and it is paid for on the opening day, not on ours.

EPUREVA answers on WhatsApp seven days a week, works with certified products, covers over 195 clients and carries professional liability insurance. Tell us the floor area, the nature of the floors, how far the works have got and your opening date, attach three to five photos, and get a quotation. The other sectors we serve are listed on the areas covered around Marrakech.