Marrakech Cracks Down on Fake Tour Guides Amid Tourist Scam Concerns

It all started with the cases of scams, denounced by the daily l’Economiste. The day after this publication, meetings were organized and led to an action plan, recalls the same media.

This reform started at the beginning of this year. In three weeks, the harvest was good. According to the same source, 300 arrests were made for usurpation of the quality of accompanying guide against 170 individuals.

The same media points out that in the lot, there are repeat offenders who, once released by the judicial authority, resume service. These are very often young school dropouts from the medina neighborhoods - the hitistes - who wait for tourists at the exit of guest houses and offer them the visit.

Jamal Saadi, from the Provincial Association of Guides, believes that the security approach is not the solution to eradicate the scourge. "Very often, these fake guides are just fined and they pay and come back into the circuit. We need to think of a sustainable solution, retrain these young people from the medina neighborhoods, train them in tourism and above all employ them," he suggested.

It should be noted that the approved guides also suffer from the illegal competition of these fake guides, taxi drivers and sometimes well-organized networks, specifies the newspaper, which hopes that these targeted actions will last over time to discourage the unscrupulous.