- The Moroccan government plans to spend $580 million to develop tourism to attract more visitors.
With a direct contribution of MAD 82.1 billion, equivalent to 7.1% of the country’s total GDP in 2019, and an anticipated 565,000 jobs – 5.0% of all employment -tourism is a significant component of the Moroccan economy. Tourism is generally a significant source of foreign exchange, accounting for 42% of service exports in 2019 but falling to 28% in 2020.
In 2019, Morocco received a total of 12.9 million international tourists, as international tourism also plays an important role. Although in the following year, international arrivals decreased by 78.5% to 2.8 million which affected the travel revenue from international tourism with a decrease to MAD 36.4 billion and a decrease of 53.8% in 2019.
Showing how the tourism sector is very crucial to the Moroccan economy, the government of Morocco on Friday announced its intention to spend 6.1 billion dirhams – $580 million – up to 2026 to develop its tourism sector in order to attract more visitors and bring in hard currency.
The office of the Prime Minister stated that the government plans to spend more money on marketing, develop more types of attractions for tourists, upgrade hotels and build new ones, and also train more people to work in the sector.
The project aims to attract 17.5 million tourists by 2026, up from 11 million in 2022. It would also assist in creating 200, 000 new jobs in the sector over the next four years.
In the first 11 months of 2022, according to the new data from the government, it indicated that Morocco’s tourism revenues reached MAD 81.7 billion – $8 billion. It represented a recovery rate of 112% compared to 2019. Also, the country was able to recover almost 84% of tourist figures in 2022 compared to 2019.