Morocco or Portugal for a winter golf trip?

The honest summary

The Algarve has roughly ten times as many courses inside an hour, and a fifty-year head start on the infrastructure around them. If your group wants five different courses, short transfers and no surprises, that is a genuinely better week and we would rather you had it.

Morocco wins on February weather, on price for the standard of accommodation, and on the fact that a group who have played the Algarve four times will remember this one. It loses on choice, on how far apart the courses are outside Marrakech, and on the number of clubs that will take a 28 handicap without a conversation.

Where Portugal is better

• More courses within a thirty-minute drive, by a wide margin
• Easier for a group with mixed handicaps — fewer hard caps
• Cheaper flights from most of northern Europe, and more of them
• English spoken at every desk, every time
• You can self-drive without thinking about it

Where Morocco is better

• Warmer in January and February, reliably
• Emptier tee sheets in the same weeks
• More accommodation for the money, particularly at the top
• Genuinely different — cork oak, red earth, the Atlas on the horizon
• Caddies are normal rather than an expensive novelty

Handicap limits, so you can check your group

This is the constraint that most often decides where a group can go. Portugal has fewer hard caps; these are ours, stated plainly.