In Parliament, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication, presented the broad outlines of a new strategy aimed at promoting culture as a lever for tourist attraction. There is no shortage of arguments. This article is a press review taken from the daily newspaper L’Economiste.
What if culture was an essential springboard for the promotion of tourism? The answer seems obvious and Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication seems determined to assert it. This is what he said in committee in Parliament, reports the daily L’Economiste in its edition of Thursday April 4. This starts with cinema. “According to him, Morocco is the preferred destination for filming, due to its geographical diversity, its natural landscapes and its historic cities. In terms of the development of national tourism, films shot locally contribute to the promotion of Morocco and constitute an improvement in the visibility of the destination,” we read. To convince, the minister provides statistics on the budget for foreign productions, invested in Morocco during the period 2020-2022. It increased from 211 million dirhams in 2020 to more than 933.7 million dirhams in 2022, an increase of 111%. The biggest developments concerned short films at +964% (with only 2.7 million dirhams), followed by television series (+267%, or more than 610.3 million dirhams) and feature films with 68% (247.5 million dirhams). “With regular flights and a highway to areas like Ouarzazate, it is possible to achieve a budget of 3 or 4 billion dirhams with foreign film production in Morocco,” adds the daily. The minister cited Atlas Studios which, in Ouarzazate, has supervised more than ten international productions, including Gladiator 2 and Secrets of the Pharaons. This represents more than 110,000 visitors, 90% of whom are international tourists, and totals more than 14,000 nights at the Oscar hotel, including nearly 2,000 for film crews. “During his presentation to the parliamentarians of the House of Advisors, the minister addressed the relationship between culture and tourism. According to the World Tourism Organization, nearly 40% of international tourists are linked to cultural tourism,” underlines L’Economiste. Therefore, cultural heritage and artistic diversity are two of the most important assets for tourism growth. Thus, the consumption of cultural content directly or indirectly affects other aspects of the economy of the host country. To assess the impact of the Gnaoua Festival and that of World Music in Essaouira, the minister underlines that, for each dirham invested in these events, the city collects 17 dirhams. Likewise, tourism constitutes an important source of consumption of craft products and cultural and creative industries.
