RABAT, June 30 (NNN-AFRICANEWS) — Morocco was the first country in Africa to start reopening air travel and as a result is enjoying a tourism boom.
“The feeling of being here again in our country is amazing we are so happy to be back thanks to God and to our king,” says Hammou Bouseta, who has just arrived from France.
Morocco received 12 million tourists in 2019, including 6 million from Moroccan residents living abroad.
This year tourism officials say Morocco is set to fill 3.5 million seats over the season – from June 15 to Sept 30 – that’s 72 percent of the same period in 2019.
During the week, June 15 to 21, Moroccan airports received 195,547 passengers via 1,857 flights.
Europe accounted for 86 percent of the total volume of air traffic with more than 168,500 passengers, followed by North America with about 9,300 and Africa with around 8,400 passengers.
“From the restart of flights on 15th June we have been receiving approximately 4,000 passengers every day and we are hoping these statistics will go up gradually, as there are other flight companies that will resume their flights from and to Marrakesh airport, as you’ve seen everything is going well,” says Zakaria Harti, airport operations manager at Marrakech Menara Airport.
Going forward there are 42 airlines that will serve 43 countries, in addition to four new companies, two from Russia, one from Israel and another from Africa.
The tourism boom comes after King Mohammed VI ordered the transport sector to facilitate the return of Moroccans residing abroad at reasonable prices.
In addition to airfare discounts, cut price deals are being offered on rail, bus and coach transport, travel agencies and car rental as well as a 30 percent reduction on hotel prices.
It’s a huge relief for the hospitality industry here, although some say they would prefer to see more restrictions lifted, especially the night curfew that starts at 11 p.m.
“We started to have reservations, of course we applied this decision (the king’s decision), we have promotions and promotional rates on all categories of rooms and indeed we started to have reservation requests that have started to move a little in this moment, but we are also asking to lift more restrictions because until now there are certain activities in the field of tourism and hotels that are still closed,” says Ahmed Benkirane, general director of Sofitel hotel in Marrakech.
Despite the optimism, tourism in Morocco is not expected to return to its usual pre-pandemic level until after 2030. According to officials, the sector lost more than 64 billion dirhams (7.2 billion U.S. dollars) last year.
“We are very confident for the future, we are looking for several markets abroad, new markets, of course we have our traditional markets which is Europe, but here we are attacking other markets at the level of Latin America, Asia, India, Israel, why not? So there are a lot of prospects, there are a lot of things that we are working and working seriously with new ideas, with new tourism in general,” says Taoufik Madih, vice president of regional tourism council in Marrakech.
Away from the hustle and bustle of Marrakech, tourists are trickling back to the desert.
The Stone Desert in Agafay, 30 kilometres from Marrakech, is already welcoming groups from Europe and the U.S.
So far, around nine million Moroccans, or 23.5 percent of the population, have been fully vaccinated. — NNN-AFRICANEWS
