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Rabat – The number of tourists who visited Morocco during the period 2010 and 2015 has increased by 10 percent.
Statistics provided by the Moroccan Minister of tourism show that the overall number of foreign tourists who choose Morocco for their vacations has increased despite the wave of terrorist attacks that plagued the MENA region in the past five years and the Arab uprisings.
According to Lahcen Haddad, Morocco’s Minister of Tourism, the number of tourists who visited Morocco between 2010 and 2015 increased by 10 percent.
Speaking before the House of Advisors on Tuesday, the Moroccan official added that this period was marked by an increase of 31 percent of hotel capacity (241,000 beds) and the creation of 60,000 additional jobs in the tourism sector.
Haddad went on to add that over 10 million tourists visited the Kingdom in 2013 for the first time (10.04 million tourists).
During the period from January to October 2015, tourists flow and booking declined, including French tourists, in comparison with the same period one year earlier, he said.
Traditional source markets, such as France and Spain, recorded a respective drop of 15 percent and eight percent while the German and British markets have increased by 17 percent and seven percent respectively, the minister pointed out.
“The decline is due to terror attacks in France, Tunisia and Turkey,” he said.
In the past couple of years, the Moroccan Ministry of tourism has launched a program that aims to attract tourists from other countries, particularly Brazil, China and Russia, Scandinavian countries, Turkey and Germany.
During a meeting of the Moroccan National Tourist Office Board of Directors last December, Haddad said that he seeks “to attract 800,000 tourists from the Scandinavian, Turkish, German and Russian markets by 2020.”
Haddad wants to attract more than 120,000 Chinese and 200,000 Russian tourists by 2020 and turn Morocco into one of the 20 largest tourist destinations in the world.
