We speak to UK-based family offices and PAs regularly, and the good ones ask the same handful of questions before they'll put a provider in front of their principal. Not because they distrust the market, but because the person booking the trip is accountable for the decision, and a bad one is expensive to unwind mid-itinerary. If you're doing this vetting for the first time, or doing it for a new provider you haven't used in Morocco before, these are the questions worth asking — of us or of anyone else you're considering.
Is the Provider Actually Licensed to Operate in Morocco?
This is the question people assume is settled and then never actually confirm. Private security in Morocco is a regulated activity, and not every company offering "close protection" on a website is operating on a proper legal footing in-country. Ask directly: are your officers licensed and are you legally authorised to provide close protection services in Morocco, not just registered as a business somewhere else that happens to send people here. A provider that hesitates on this question, or answers vaguely, is telling you something. Our close protection teams operate on that basis as a baseline, not a selling point — it should be table stakes for anyone you shortlist.
Who Is the Single Point of Contact — and What Happens When They're Not Available?
A family office doesn't want to be routed through a call centre, and it doesn't want a different coordinator every time it calls. Ask for a named point of contact for the duration of the engagement, and ask what the fallback is if that person is asleep, on a plane, or otherwise unreachable when something changes. For UK principals travelling on short notice — which is often how this works — the answer needs to be a real person or a live desk, not "someone will get back to you." Our UK client work is built around exactly this: one contact who owns the relationship end to end, backed by a 24/7 operations desk so a gap in coverage never becomes the PA's problem to solve alone.
Does the Team Operate in English Throughout — Not Just With the Principal
It's easy to confirm that the lead officer speaks English. It's a different question whether the whole operation does — the coordinator taking your calls, the driver, the second officer on a two-person detail, the person who answers if you ring the ops desk at 2am UK time. A language gap anywhere in that chain turns a simple logistics update into a slow, frustrating exchange, and in an actual incident it's not acceptable at all. Ask specifically whether briefings, written reports, and day-to-day coordination happen in English as standard, or only get translated when someone remembers to.
What Does the Confidentiality Process Actually Look Like — And When Does It Happen?
"NDA available on request" on a services page tells you nothing about sequencing. The real question is: at what point in the process is confidentiality formalised — before you share the principal's name and itinerary, or after? Family offices are often disclosing sensitive travel patterns, property locations, and family details well before a contract is signed, sometimes just to get an accurate quote. A provider that asks for that information before offering an NDA, or treats confidentiality as a formality rather than a first step, has the sequence backwards. We've written in detail about how we actually handle client privacy — worth reading regardless of which provider you end up using, because it's a reasonable template for what to expect from any of them.
What Does Their Track Record With International Clients Actually Look Like?
Every provider will claim experience with "high-net-worth clients." Push past that. Ask how long they've operated in Morocco specifically, what proportion of their work is with international families versus purely local corporate clients, and whether they can speak — without breaking confidentiality — to the types of engagements they run: family holidays, second-home visits, event attendance, multi-generational travel. A firm that's used to private client work will have ready, specific answers about group sizes, seasonal patterns, and how they scale a detail up or down. A firm that's mostly done corporate or diplomatic work will talk in generalities, because families aren't what they usually plan around.
- Confirm the provider is licensed to operate close protection in Morocco, not just registered as a business
- Get a named single point of contact, plus a fallback for when they're unreachable
- Ask whether English is the working language throughout the team, not just with the principal
- Establish exactly when confidentiality is formalised, before or after itinerary details are shared
- Ask for specifics on international and family-client experience, not general reassurance
None of this is unusual due diligence — it's the same standard a family office applies to any vendor handling something sensitive on the principal's behalf. A provider that answers these questions clearly and quickly, before you've had to press, is usually the one worth shortlisting.