Morocco’s Tourism Boom: $440 Million Airport Expansions Set to Triple Capacity in Marrakech and Agadir

The National Airports Office (ONDA) announced on Tuesday the identity of the awardees of the contracts for the extension projects of the Marrakech-Menara and Agadir Al-Massira airports. The combined amount of these two operations exceeds 4.4 billion dirhams and aims to address the growing saturation of these two airport infrastructures.

For the Agadir Al-Massira airport, the contract was won by the Société Générale des Travailleurs du Maroc (SGTM) for an amount of 2.2 billion dirhams. This extension is necessary due to traffic having exceeded 3 million passengers in 2024, for a nominal capacity of 2.5 million. The project aims to increase the platform’s capacity to 7.5 million passengers. SGTM’s offer, valued at 2.23 billion dirhams, was considered "more advantageous" compared to that of its sole competitor, the TGCC-Inter Tridim group, which amounted to 2.26 billion dirhams.

A similar saturation problem concerns the Marrakech-Menara airport. The extension contract, worth 2.2 billion dirhams, was awarded to the Moroccan group Jet Contractors. In 2024, the platform recorded a traffic of 9.3 million passengers, an increase of 34%, exceeding its maximum capacity of 8 million. The planned works aim to double this capacity to 16 million travelers. The choice fell on Jet Contractors, which presented the lowest bid, compared to the proposals of the TGCC-Inter Tridim group (2.53 billion dirhams) and SGTM (2.7 billion dirhams).

These two projects are part of a global investment program, formalized at the end of June by a memorandum of understanding between the government and ONDA for the period 2025-2030. This program has a total envelope of 38 billion dirhams. It includes the development of the reception capacity of the airports of Tangier and Fez, as well as the construction of a new terminal and a new runway at the Mohammed V airport in Casablanca, for a cost of 25 billion dirhams. An additional 13 billion dirhams is allocated to maintenance, modernization and land acquisition for the entire network.