There were 9.5 million tourists crossing Moroccan border posts in the first eleven months of 2016. These arrivals improved slightly compared to the same period of the previous year. The Tourism Observatory, which has just published the sector dashboards at the end of November, notes an increase of 0.8% in arrivals in this regard. This breakdown is driven by the consolidation of arrivals of Moroccans residing abroad. The latter showed an increase of 3.8% at the end of November when arrivals of foreign tourists for stay experienced a decline of 2.2% in the first eleven months of the year. By market, Russian and Chinese arrivals have clearly improved. The Tourism Observatory notes respectively 25,540 and 22,000 additional arrivals compared to the same period of the previous year.
On the other hand, traditional markets have seen a decline in arrivals. Let us cite in this sense the United Kingdom (-7%), Germany (-3%) and France (-2%). At the same time, Morocco received more Spanish, Dutch and Belgian tourists at the end of November. Thus, Spanish and Dutch arrivals increased by 2% each while the Belgian market saw its arrivals increase by 1%. On the other hand, overnight stays in classified tourist hotel establishments recovered in the first eleven months of the year. At the end of November, they reached 17,763,987 overnight stays, an increase of 3.3% compared to the same period of 2015. Marrakech and Agadir continue to take the largest shares, i.e. 60% of total overnight stays at the end of 2016. Overnight stays have experienced a positive development in these two areas, i.e. 5% for Marrakech and 3% for Agadir. According to the Tourism Observatory, the other main destinations showed contrasting results.
At a time when Fez saw its overnight stays decline by 8%, Tangier showed an increase of 7%, followed by Casablanca 6%. Rabat, for its part, showed stabilization (+1%), for a total of 575,808 overnight stays at the end of November. Regarding the occupancy rate, the Tourism Observatory indicates that it has fallen by one point compared to the same period of 2015. It thus stood at 40% until last November. The first eleven months of 2016 were marked by good performance in travel revenue. Revenues generated by the tourist activity of non-residents of Morocco amounted to 59.4 billion dirhams compared to 57.2 billion dirhams in 2015, an increase of 3.9%.
