This answer actually ties back to a question we got from a Canadian who was doing due diligence on SaharaTrek. He asked with 25+ years of experience, why don’t we have a move TripAdvisor reviews? The short answer was 1) TripAdvisor didn’t exist when we started, and 2) strategic repositioning and corporate restructuring. The long answer is we pivoted to what we wanted and do and what we did best, show clients the real Morocco, not become land barons.
8. Any issues acquiring resources like land, machines, etc…
A few years before COVID hit, I wasn’t just running tours. I was commanding a small empire on the edge of civilization.
Forty camels. Each one with a personality, a name, and an opinion about everything. Three Jeeps that knew every washboard road in southern Morocco. Two Land Rovers for the clients who wanted “comfort” (adorable concept in the Sahara). One minibus for the groups who traveled in packs.
And the crown jewel? The Hotel Sahara itself.
The same mud-brick fortress where I’d first slid to a stop in 1999 while Habib laughed his ass off. The place where SaharaTrek was born over late-night mint tea and bigger dreams. A converted French Foreign Legion barracks that had seen colonial soldiers, independence fighters, and now American tourists seeking adventure.
I owned it all.
We were the operation everyone else measured themselves against. The standard. The original. The real deal in a market filling up with pretenders.
Then the gold rush hit.
Europeans discovered Morocco like Columbus discovered America—convinced they were the first ones there, completely ignoring everyone who’d been doing it for years.
They came with money. Serious money. Buying riads in Marrakech. Building boutique hotels in Fez. Snapping up properties in the south like they were collecting Monopoly pieces. The tourism market went from “charming opportunity” to “full-scale land grab” moving faster than a sandstorm hitting you square in the face.
Suddenly, I had a choice staring me in the face:
Option A: Join the arms race. Buy more. Build bigger. Expand faster. Pour money into property and assets to stay ahead of the flood. Become a real estate mogul who also happened to run tours.
Option B: Do the most counter-intuitive thing possible in a booming market.
Sell everything.
I chose Option B.
Sold the camels. Sold the vehicles. Sold the Hotel Sahara—the physical embodiment of everything SaharaTrek had built, the place where it all began—to the highest bidder in a market drunk on optimism and European investment capital.
People thought I was crazy. “The market’s booming! Why are you leaving?”
Because I wasn’t leaving. I was repositioning. Focusing on what SaharaTrek did best.
The sale brought in five years of revenue. Five. Years. In one transaction. Money that wasn’t tied up in camel feed or Land Rover maintenance or hotel renovations or property taxes.
Liquid capital. Pure possibility.
Here’s the punchline that makes me smile every time: After the sale, I could book rooms at the Hotel Sahara—the hotel I used to own—for less than it cost me to operate it.
Let that sink in.
The new owners took on all the overhead. The staff. The maintenance. The utilities. The headaches of Moroccan bureaucracy and building codes and surprise repairs when the plumbing revolts.
I just made reservations. Showed up with clients. Paid the going rate.
Which was less than my operating costs had been.
They got the privilege of ownership. I got the freedom of flexibility. And my clients got a better price without the overhead.
Here’s what I figured out on the edge of the Sahara, watching Europeans race each other to plant flags in Moroccan sand:
Never marry your assets.
Buy, lease, or rent—whatever keeps you dynamic. Whatever keeps your capital ready to move when opportunity knocks. Because opportunity doesn’t wait for you to refinance your property or liquidate your camel herd or find a buyer for your hotel in a market that might crash tomorrow.
Solid bank account. Lean operations. Best value. Maximum flexibility.
The Europeans who bought in at the peak? Some made it work. Most got crushed when markets shifted, tourism dried up during COVID, or they discovered that owning a historic property in Morocco comes with complications they never imagined.
Me? I was free. Free to adapt. Free to pivot. Free to weather storms because I wasn’t anchored to assets that could become anchors in the bad way—the kind that drag you to the bottom.
They teach you in business school to build empires. Acquire assets. Own property. Create tangible value.
But sometimes the real adventure isn’t building the empire.
It’s knowing exactly when to sell it, take the money, and stroll into the desert with your pockets full and your options open.
Because in the end, the best asset you can own isn’t land or machines or even forty cantankerous camels.
It’s the freedom to say “yes” to the next opportunity without asking permission from the last one.
That’s not retreat. That’s strategy. And it’s the best deal I’ve ever made. I do, however, miss my camels.
