Chinese Guides Flout Moroccan Law, Threaten Local Tourism Industry

The resurgence of fake guides, freshly arriving from China, to practice this sensitive profession in the Kingdom, without the minimum required, worries more than one. The site LesEcos.ma, which recently denounced the phenomenon in an article, is thus sounding the alarm. "Every day, Chinese people arrive in Morocco with a tourist visa, take two months of French courses and then start practicing. And it’s no longer a secret, on the Chinese web, the agencies openly offer their service catalogs," writes the media.

This situation, LesEcos.ma assures, annoys Moroccan guides who "are increasingly mastering the Chinese language, studied in Chinese universities or in Chinese institutes in Morocco." To succeed in their dirty work, the media explains that many of these Chinese, who operate without papers in the Kingdom, leave the territory every three months to update their tourist visa in Tunisia. Some of them, who have a little more means, are setting up a company domiciliation, while others are considering marrying a Moroccan woman to regularize their situation.

These facts seriously harm Moroccan tourism, victim of a Chinese counter-tourism which, according to the same source, "leaves no benefit to the Moroccan market." The survey carried out by LesEcos.ma also testifies to this. It emerges, in fact, that "these Chinese agencies rent or buy the accommodation made available to their clients, the restaurants are paid in advance from China and these Chinese generally do not have a driver’s license." To this is added the denigration of the country by the Chinese who spread false information about Morocco, denying part of the Moroccan Sahara, for example.

Faced with this gloomy picture that does not improve Moroccan tourism, professionals call on the Ministry of Tourism to take drastic measures to enforce the law and prevent the fraudulent business of these Chinese who "pay their employees in China for services performed on Moroccan territory".