Jnane Tamsna

There are hotels in North Africa where you’ll get a whitewashed, tourists-only experience, but Jnane Tamsna, in Marrakech’s Palmeraie, is not one of them. This is one of too few Black-owned hotels of any description anywhere, and its owners, the Senegalese-Parisian lawyer-turned-designer Meryanne Loum-Martin and her husband, the American ethnobotanist Gary Martin, have sought to preserve authenticity above all else — the hotel’s Diversity Excursions are a model for respectful cultural tourism.

And the hotel itself is a stunner. It’s spread across five houses, whose décor and furnishings represent a celebration of Moroccan design tradition and African art and craft in general. Its 24 rooms are tastefully luxurious, each one with its own terrace, and each house has its own pool and gardens — the villas can be booked in their entirety, if you’re traveling in numbers.

The cuisine, naturally, is painstakingly local; dinners may be served in the communal dining room or out in the sprawling gardens. And while the excursions, whether by bike, sidecar, or camelback, are the hotel’s pride, there’s plenty to do on site as well, from tennis to cooking classes to calligraphy and even magic lessons for kids.