Head of government Aziz Akhannouch has confirmed that the Moroccan government is actively formulating and implementing a new roadmap for the tourism sector. The objective of the plan is to ensure sustainable growth and to align with significant changes in demand and markets.
During a presentation to the Council of Advisors at the monthly accountability session on Tuesday, Akhannouch announced that the government had signed a framework agreement on March 17th to execute the strategic roadmap for the tourism sector by 2026.
The plan aims to develop tourism as a major sector for economic growth, with a budget of 6.1 billion dirhams.
The roadmap intends to attract 17.5 million tourists annually by 2026, creating approximately 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, and generating 120 billion dirhams in hard currency revenues for the sector.
To achieve these objectives, the approved roadmap focuses on transforming the tourism sector by working on all key levers. This involves adopting a new vision of the tourism offer centered around the customer experience through nine thematic chains.
The roadmap includes a plan to double the capacity of air transport, strengthening promotion and marketing with special attention to digitization, diversifying cultural and entertainment promotional products with the emergence of modern small and medium-sized enterprises, rehabilitating hotels and creating new accommodation capacities, and enhancing human capital by creating an attractive framework for training and resource management to improve the quality of the sector.
Additionally, the prime minister mentioned the implementation of an emergency plan worth 2 billion dirhams, which included five measures within the framework of supporting national tourism.
The measures extended the disbursement of lump-sum compensation, postponed the payment of contributions due to the National Social Security Fund for six months, postponed the payment deadlines for bank loans, exempted hotel owners from the professional tax due for two years, and allocated a financial envelope of one billion dirhams to support the rehabilitation of hotel establishments.
Thanks to these efforts, the country has experienced a significant recovery after the opening of borders in March 2022. Morocco welcomed approximately 11 million tourists between March and December 2022, an increase of 292% compared to 2021 and 391% compared to 2020.
The introduction of an “e-visa” system has also facilitated the process of obtaining entry visas for citizens of 49 countries. The government has granted more than 80,000 electronic visas to date.
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