Morocco Aims to Restore Tourism to Pre-Pandemic Levels by March

"We are confident that the recovery will happen quickly, whether in Marrakech or in other cities of the kingdom. Indeed, as soon as the borders reopened on February 7, a good part of the foreign companies resumed their programming on Morocco, unveiling interesting programs with gradual resumption of their programming on the Kingdom. By the end of March, we will have reached the 2019 capacity, which is a very good performance," said the minister in an interview with Challenge.

She recalled that in parallel, the ONMT teams have started a tour in the strategic markets, to meet the main travel prescribers, particularly the air partners of Morocco and that this tour was crowned by the announcement of leading companies on the destination of record increases as early as summer 2022. "For example, Ryanair will exceed by 50% the capacity of the same period in 2019 (pre-pandemic reference year) and Transavia and Easyjet announce significant increases, respectively around 40% and 11%," she added.

What about the other actions taken to revive the tourism sector? "In parallel with the commercial and partnership aspects, the ONMT has mobilized on another strategic axis of the recovery which is the promotion of the image of the destination Morocco, by deploying two simultaneous communication campaigns for national and international tourism. A well-studied and well-targeted communication to, on the one hand, reconquer international tourists and, on the other hand, continue to make Moroccans at home and abroad want to discover or rediscover the riches of their country," said Fatim-Zahra Ammor.

Morocco is preparing to regain its market share. "We believe that several issues are crucial at this stage to quickly regain our market share and it is obvious that the financial issue is paramount to allow the various tourism departments, including the ONMT, to wage their battle on several fronts (commercial, communication, partnerships...). We are aware that the competition will be global and we will put in place the necessary means to preserve our shares in the source markets and develop new markets," assures the official.