After being elected president of the capital’s CRT last December, Hassan Bargach developed a strategy intended to make his city a flagship cultural destination in the Kingdom. The budgets he has just obtained from the ONMT and the region will, according to him, allow the figures for tourist arrivals and overnight stays to explode by the end of his mandate in 2020.
Despite its many assets, Rabat has long suffered from a lack of international image which made it appear as a simple stopover town, and made it invisible on the radars of major tour operators.
“Now that our new digital-focused strategy is ready, the serious things are about to begin. Thanks to the budgets recently allocated by the ONMT and the region, the CRT will be able to translate it into concrete actions and make Rabat a real tourist destination,” says the capital’s new tourism boss.
Asked about the amount of envelopes released by the office and the authorities of the Rabat-Salé region, Bargach prefers to avoid the question “so as not to make people jealous.”
“To spare the CRTs who receive less, it is better to ask the question to the contributors but the investment budget is sufficient to finance and realize the ambitions of our strategy.
We will start by enriching our site with an attractive offer. And next year, we will tackle promotion by inviting foreign T.Os and the international specialized press.
After the implementation of tools (operational site, mobile geolocation applications, image backgrounds, presence on social networks, etc.) which we were sorely lacking in a planet where 70% travel by consulting the internet, the international visibility of Rabat will become important from 2019 to position the city as a cultural city-break destination,” says Bargach.
As to whether the grants allocated are one-shot or budgeted over several years, our interlocutor affirms that they will be renewed or not depending on the results.
“If we optimize the number of tourist arrivals, the ONMT and the region will release other budgets and should even increase them. But otherwise, the faucet will stop rightly. These envelopes are sufficient to achieve convincing results but we will fight for more,” specifies the president who plans to mobilize 100,000 followers on social networks in six months.
“We could pay an Indian company to get 15 million fans in a short time, but we are looking for quality customers. With the budget entrusted to a company specializing in buzz, we will quickly reach the figure of 100,000 on our Visit Rabat Facebook page. It is updated daily with news, not to mention photos on Instagram. With this information platform, people are informed of everything that is happening in the capital,” adds Bargach, who believes that the digital exhibition will produce “good quantifiable results” from 2019.
“This can be quickly verified with indicators that do not lie. From the end of 2018, we will be able to measure the evolution of the number of arrivals and overnight stays in the capital.
Apart from our digital actions, we will also benefit from economic and structural advantages. There is the international enthusiasm for Morocco which enjoys a unique image of stability, but also the hotel offer which will progress in the 3 years to come. Three large 5-star hotels will open their doors in 2019 (Ritz Carlton, Marriot, Fairmont) without counting the 4 stars arriving in 2020-2021.
The arrival of these structured chains will lead to the arrival of new international tourists. In addition, Rabat-Salé airport will triple its reception capacity (from 2 million passengers to 6) and several airline openings are currently being negotiated, says Bargach, who recalls that there was an 80% increase in arrivals in February 2018 compared to February 2017
Knowing that the capital recorded 719,000 overnight stays in 2017, the CRT expects to reach 1 million in 2020 thanks in particular to the new hotel offer which will benefit from higher occupancy in Morocco.
source: medias24.com
