In 2017, the province had 65 classified tourist accommodation units, all categories combined, with a total capacity of 3,047 bedsand 4,000 camping pitches.
Thirty-nine other projects are in progress and should see the light of day at the end of 2018 in the city and its rural area. They are intended to strengthen the province’s bed capacity, with 1,960 new beds, and to improve the service of the hotel park. Also, these projects should generate 400 direct jobs in different tourism professions and dozens of indirect jobs.
Ifrane also has more than 60 holiday villages reporting to different public departments and private organizations, totaling a capacity of 2,400 beds to which is added the phenomenon of homestay accommodation, which supports classified hotel establishments to respond to visitor flows, especially during periods of high attendance.
Added to this are the tourism projects programmed as part of the 2020 vision, which will support the development of activity and contribute to the diversification of the region’s tourism offering, thus ensuring complementarity with the destinations of Fez and Meknes.
According to the provincial delegate for Tourism, Meryam Ouddaani: « Several measures have been put in place to support tourism development in the province, including the establishment of a tourist reception infrastructure, to answer their questions and direct them towards activities, sites and circuits according to their needs. »
The supervisory department, through the Ifrane delegation, « supports professionals, by adopting an approach of advice and guidance, rather than control », she underlined.
« By supporting the developer from the design phase of his project plans, we assure him of a certain speed in the processing of his file, as well as its outcome by the attribution of the decision of provisional technical classification and the building authorization », she explained. The support extends to monitoring achievements to ensure that “there will be no anomalies which could block the project in subsequent administrative procedures”.
It is thanks to this approach, she assured, that it was possible to reduce by half the time for processing applications for the creation of tourist accommodation establishments.
However, tourist operators believe that more efforts must be made, particularly in terms of training human resources and promoting this destination with multiple potential.
During the first half of 2018, the province recorded a total of 39,570 arrivals in classified tourist accommodation establishments, compared to 32,759 during the same period of 2017. During this same half-year, these establishments saw the number of nights increase from 72,293 in 2017 to 75,152 nights.
source: medias24.com
