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Rabat – Travel website My Late Deals ranked Marrakech the 25th best city in the world for street food.
The index features the best cities around the world for street food-obsessed travelers.
My Late Deals selected the 30 cities in the index based on which cities appear in ‘best street food cities’ lists more than once.
The index ranks each city according to four criteria: The number of street food vendors, affordability, number of street food tours, and sanitation.
To get a figure for the number of street food vendors in each location, the travel website analyzed street food data using Google Maps.
My Late Deals used Numbeo, a crowd-sourced global database of consumer prices, to find out the current price of an inexpensive meal in each city.
The website also consulted Viator to determine the number of street tours available in each city.
Sanitation in each city is based on data from UNICEF.
My Late Deals gave the cities a score from 0 to 30 for each criterion. The best total score a city could receive based on all four criteria would, therefore, be 120.
Hong Kong topped the list with a score of 93, beating competition from Bangkok, Thailand, and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
Marrakech, meanwhile, earned a total score of 48.
The Moroccan city received eight points in the number of street food vendors category, 26 points in the affordability category, and 12 points in the number of street food tours category.
However, Marrakech only earned 2 points in the sanitation category, coming second-to-last in this section before Dakar, Senegal.
Low sanitary standards may explain why in August 2019, the ochre city ranked seventh in the list of top ten worst places for food poisoning.
The ranking is based on an investigation from the UK’s leading holiday sickness claim experts, Sick Holiday, and food intolerance company YorkTest.
The data is based on insurance claims submitted to Sick Holiday. Marrakech landed a spot on the ranking due to 83 reported cases of food poisoning by tourists.
“One of the more common holiday illnesses reported to Sickholiday.com in Morocco is Dysentery, a bacterial infection that can lead to severe diarrhea, stomach cramps and in rare cases can be life-threatening,” Sick Holiday reported.
“Although all holidaymakers visiting Morocco are advised to drink only bottled water, poorly maintained swimming pools can also lead to serious stomach illness such as Gastroenteritis as a result of contracting Cryptosporidium.”
Tourists in Marrakech should exercise good personal hygiene, wash hands frequently, carry hand sanitizer, and avoid uncooked vegetables and unfiltered water.
Read also: 10 Most Delicious Moroccan Foods
