Morocco Ranks Among Top 5 Mid-Range Travel Destinations for French Tourists

The Union of Tour Operating Companies (Seto) made public on Friday the travel trends of the French at the beginning of 2022. It notes a "very strong recovery" marked by a clear restart of bookings in the first two months of 2022. But the war in Ukraine put an end to this trend from February 25. A total of 1.90 million travelers (dry flights and flight+hotel) traveled, from November 1, 2021 to February 28, 2022, using the 70 tour operators members of Seto (including Fram, Club Med, Costa Cruises, TUI France, Voyageurs du Monde, etc.). This figure is down 3% compared to 2019.

According to a Seto barometer, Spain (the Canary Islands and the Balearics), and Greece and its islands (Crete, Rhodes in particular) have retained their first place in the top 10 medium-haul destinations during this period. Tunisia and Morocco are again among the top five medium-haul destinations. Mauritius climbs to second place, thus regaining its pre-pandemic level with 25,772 package tours. It is followed by the French West Indies, which exceed 2019 with 22,155 package tours (19,318 in 2019).

Seto makes the following hypothesis: if the slowdown due to the war in Ukraine "does not last and the elections do not bring a new braking effect", the prospects suggest "activity levels before the health crisis". "And all the more so since we have been able to regularly observe catch-up effects after periods of stagnation linked to an anxious context with a clientele with a real desire to travel".