Ideally, that leads to some sort of win-win situation. I spent a day visiting Fes, with a local guide. Fes has a fantastic Medina (old inner city), a labyrinth of narrow alleys of residential quarters and shops, which is actually a protected UNESCO World Heritage. You can explore it without a guide, but there are shops you'll never find, and you'll have no idea which shops are interesting, or how their relative quality to the next shop is. If you hire a guide, you will quickly notice that there are some undisclosed economic interactions involved: The guide will lead you to certain shops, and he'll get a commission when you buy stuff there. That is just part of the tourist game, and it isn't necessarily to your disadvantage. Our guide led us to shops that were, as part of their sales pitch, quite willing to show how they were making the things they sell. We visited for example a pottery, a weaver, and a tannery, and were able to watch the artisans. It was extremely obvious that the goods for sale were not made in China, but made at the location by local artisans. And for me, there is some value to that.

Of course a hand-woven scarf, even in Morocco, costs a lot more than buying a similar looking scarf from Shein. But it costs a lot less than a hand-woven scarf made by an artisan in a first world country. And while patterns are sometimes internationally copied, getting a scarf with Moroccan design in Morocco feels a lot more authentic. I even got a hand-woven djellaba, which I'll use as a house coat, and which is something hard to get outside places with a strong Maghrebian community. We got a pottery plate with Berber design, and a hand-stitched hand bag. We visited a hole-in-the-wall bakery and bought some excellent Moroccan cookies, with lots of almonds and sesame. In general, we are quite happy with our purchases, feeling that the prices we paid were very much justified by the quality of the goods. We were happy, the shopkeepers were happy, and the guide was happy. In such a constellation, tourism feels less exploitative.