Poker Fortune to Moroccan Spa Empire: French Couple’s Daring Gamble Pays Off

– bySylvanus · 3 min read
Poker Fortune to Moroccan Spa Empire: French Couple's Daring Gamble Pays Off

A French woman recounts how she left her country with her husband, a former professional poker player, and their daughter to settle in Morocco, a country where the family has managed to build its empire.

"My husband signed a contract to play in a casino in Marrakech, at a time when poker was developing in Morocco with Texas hold’em. We came regularly for tournaments. The game allowed us to live off it, so we ended up leaving everything behind in France," says Brigitte Loudet to Var-Matin. This office manager for seventeen years in the construction sector, who was also the director of a vocational training school for adults for ten years, and her husband, a former professional poker player, ended up leaving France. The Toulon native reveals what truly motivated her little family to leave France. "I think what pushed us to leave France was the tax system. As entrepreneurs, we worked tremendously hard and took a lot of risks. We even lost money in some investments, only to end up not earning much in the end," she confides.

Poker allowed her family to travel to Asia. "We did the casino tour for three months in Shanghai, Macau... but it went very badly for him with significant losses every day. So Bangkok was an escape," says the travel enthusiast. During this trip, she had the idea of opening a "small Thai massage spa" in Morocco. She planned to train in Thai massage at the Buddhist Wat Po school in Bangkok, to provide authentic traditional Thai massages. "But it was complicated to reach the level of these girls! That’s how I decided to bring real Thai therapists to Morocco and create a spa with the Moroccan hammam and combine it with the benefits of Thai massage."

She opened her first 100 m² Baan Thaï Institut salon in 2012 and employed only three masseuses and two hammam employees. Success was on her side. Fourteen years later, the care space has been multiplied by ten. "With Moroccan television, it was a big buzz. And for the past five years, we’ve opened a second institute in Tangier," Brigitte proudly states. In parallel, she has partnered with Michelin-starred chef Jean-Emmanuel Christ to open L’endroit, a Mediterranean restaurant located in the Hivernage district, the center of Marrakech’s nightlife, in January 2024.

Over the years, Brigitte - now 60 years old - has become a successful businesswoman. She does not regret her choice to leave France. "From the moment we arrived in Morocco, we fell in love. The people are welcoming, they made us feel welcome. And it’s easy to settle down since it’s a French-speaking country. The three of us absolutely do not regret having left France, this beautiful country that is ours. We hesitated for a long time between Thailand and Morocco, but it was closer and easier to go back and forth, and also for family and friends to come and see us here. In fact, we brought Thailand to Morocco. And a little bit of Toulon, too."