Late last year, Morocco suspended international flights to try to curb the spread of the omicron variant. Now, as restrictions are lifted, the tourism industry is struggling to get back on its feet.

Morocco welcomed 13 million tourists in 2019. In 2021, this figure fell to just 4 million. Late last year, the situation worsened significantly when Morocco suspended international flights in an attempt to stop the spread of the omicron variant.

Halima Bousekkaoui employed six people in her guest house. Today, there is only a director and a housekeeper. Morocco’s air borders reopened on February 7, but the road to recovery will be long for the establishment.

« We have deteriorated a lot due to the increase in debts, we are no longer able to pay employees’ salaries, we save a lot to reduce the accumulation of debts, unfortunately the debts increase every time« , she says.

Morocco’s tourism sector was directly responsible for around 500,000 jobs and contributed $8 billion to the economy before the pandemic.

Revenues in free fall

There are around 30,000 tourism businesses in Morocco, from guest houses to restaurants to transport agencies. There are 11,000 tourist vehicles in Morocco, 30% of them in Marrakech. But without visitors to transport, these buses have been parked for so long that weeds are growing around their tires. As people finally start returning to Morocco for their vacations, getting them back on the road is another problem.

« The losses are very significant because the shutdown causes a certain amount of damage. Today, the maintenance of these vehicles requires enormous sums of money to operate again« , explains Mohammed Bamensour, secretary general of the National Federation of Tourist Transport in Marrakech.

Tourism revenue has collapsed compared to 2019, falling from 80 billion dirhams ($8.6 billion) in 2019 to just 30 billion dirhams ($3.2 billion) in 2021. Restaurants like this relied almost exclusively on foreign tourists. From now on, the tables are empty.

« The Marrakech restaurant operates with 80% foreign customers, so the day after the borders closed, we lost 80% of our customers« , says Imane Rmili, president of the Regional Association of Restaurants and owner of a restaurant in Marrakech.

A glimmer of hope appeared in the summer of 2021. Between July and September, tourist income reached nearly 16 billion dirhams, compared to less than 5.4 billion for the first three months of the year. But in November the government imposed a flight ban, which was extended again in December.

During the lockdown, the industry had to lobby for government support. The government has allocated an amount of two billion dirhams to support the tourism sector in order to deal with this crisis. But businesses need the return of tourists to survive.

source: fr.africanews.com