Travel Weekly Digital Edition

In 2006, 100,000 U.S. travelers visited Morocco; the country hopes to double that figure in three years.
Mo rocco to seek resort guests with money to spend

D E S TIN A TIO N S

Qatari businessmen are investing $2 billion in Tangier, where a new port for cargo will free up existing ports at Tangier and Casablanca for leisure vessels.

By Kenneth Kiesnoski

With three years left in its decade-long Vision 2010 tourism development program, Morocco is focusing on quality, then quantity. The game plan is to grow annual international arrivals to 10 million and to open six luxury resorts along the country’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.

nature, Maaninou noted.

Of the 70,000 hotel beds Morocco had in 2001, 80% were located in “cultural destinations,” or cities such as Fez, Casablanca and Marrakech.

The MNTO wants to shift the tourism mix to 55% sun-and-fun vs. 45% cultural. However, it is not interested in mass-mar-ket, packaged beach holidays of the type found in Tunisia, Jamaica and Turkey.

“Often, the more people you have visiting, the less money you earn per person,” said Maaninou. “To bring 100,000 Germans in for less than $400 a week, including air fare and food — we will not do that.”

Instead, Moroccan tourism officials are targeting the big spenders. To date, they’ve had some success growing both traffic and tariffs.

“In 2001, the average income from each of our tourist was 800 euros [approximately

$1,075],” Maaninou said. “Today, it is 1,100 euros [$1,485] so we have not only more tourists but also more money.

“Tunisia is not an up-market market,” he added. “We receive the same number of tourists, but we earn 2. 5 times the revenue.”

amount in the coming year.

“The funds will be spent reaching the trade and building a trade database to be more pragmatic and catch their customers.”

He said that agencies affiliated with Virtuoso and American Express were primary targets.

“The people who are going to Morocco are really sophisticated customers,” said Maaninou. “They are high-income, univer-sity-educated and newspaper readers. We know the type of people who are interested in vacationing in Morocco, so we’re doing very targeted marketing.”

In 2006, 100,000 U.S. travelers visited Morocco; the MNTO hopes to double that figure in three years.

“It seems a high target, but we’re talking to people, media and the trade, and Morocco is really on the radar,” said Maaninou.

“People want to go. They want something
different.”

Visits to Morocco have risen from 4 million in 2002 to 6. 6 million last year. In the first quarter of 2007, the destination posted 12% year-over-year

‘Morocco is really on
the radar.’

— Rachid Maaninou, MNTO

According to Rachid Maaninou, international markets director at the Moroccan National Tourist Office, the upscale coastal developments will help the country attract more affluent vacationers looking for sun and fun with a dash of culture.

“Morocco has no oil, but we have sun and a [strong] native culture, so we decided to make tourism our principal industry,” he

said. “We started to build six new resorts last January in order to triple the capacity of beds of international standards to 230,000 by 2010. We are developing these resorts with international partners.”

Before the launch of the so-called Azur Plan to build the six beach resorts, Morocco had just 3. 5 miles of developed coastline. Most tourism was urban and cultural in

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Targeted marketing in the U.S.

Along those lines, this year the MNTO again began courting U.S. travelers, typically among the biggest spenders worldwide, for the first time in a decade. Morocco is trying to rebuild U.S. arrivals, which plummeted by half in the wake of 9/11.

“After 9/11, the numbers from the U.S. dropped completely, and we’re just coming back,” said Maaninou. “We were at 120,000 per year in 2000 and early 2001 but were at just 60,000 in 2002 and 2003.”

The tourism office is spending an initial $850,000 or so of its $72 million marketing budget to court wealthy U.S. travelers on the East Coast.

“That’s just a beginning,” he said. “It’s difficult to do anything in the U.S. for under $10 million. We’re going to increase this

growth.

This May, the MNTO ran a trade and media junket to spread the word in the U.S.

“We were here to talk to tour operators to give them new ideas and to bring them to Morocco to see for themselves,” said Maaninou. “When we have enough product on the map, we’ll go talk to travel agents with e-training programs because if they don’t know the destination, they won’t sell it.”

In addition to the U.S., the MNTO is expanding tourism marketing from its Western European core, which accounts for 80% of visits, to farther-flung source markets such as Russia and Scandinavia.

In the States, the tourism board is focusing on the Northeast because nonstop flights to Casablanca are available out of New York on Royal Air Maroc. The flight is