Morocco is reaping the benefits of increased air capacity and a new British film
Short-break business to Morocco has received a considerable boost this year, thanks to the masses of column inches generated by the recent Kate Winslet film Hideous Kinky, set in the streets and markets of Marrakesh.
Moroccan National Tourist Office director UK and Ireland Ali El Kasmi said:”Marrakesh is very trendy. All the newspapers are talking about it. Because of the film, there has been a huge amount of promotion.”
The only downside to being flavour of the month is that consumer demand for airline seats to Marrakesh is outstripping supply.
“Even though we have the hotel beds, the flights have been full in February and March. April looks very busy too,” El Kasmi said.
The current bottleneck looks set to ease this autumn, when flag carrier Royal Air Maroc is due to lay on two direct services to Marrakesh – currently the airline only flies to Marrakesh via its hub in Casablanca. In addition, British Airways franchisee GB Airways is to lay on an extra flight this autumn to Marrakesh from Gatwick, taking its total to three flights a week.
“The shortage of flights is the most difficult problem to solve. It will be helpful when Royal Air Maroc puts on the two direct Marrakesh flights,” said El Kasmi.
Once the extra capacity is in place, the tourist board will be able to increase its promotional activity to the conference and incentives market.
“There’s a huge demand for conference and incentives in Marrakesh. This is down to its short flying time from the UK, the fabulous scenery of the Atlas Mountains, the experience we have hosting conferences, and the fact that it is much cheaper than the rest of Europe,” said El Kasmi.
“At the moment, it is hard for us to respond positively to a request if there are 30 or 40 people in a group, as it is difficult to get seats on the aircraft. We’re losing a lot of business from that,” said El Kasmi.
One of the prime conference centres in Marrakesh is the Palais des Congres, which is run by hotel group Accor’s resorts division.
Increasing the number of conference and incentive visitors is in tune with the tourist office’s plans to attract small numbers of high-spending tourists, instead of encouraging mass-market tourism.
“We want to promote a quality product to high-spending clients, and we want to give priority to independent operators,” said El Kasmi. ” We have to be careful with big operators as we want Morocco’s character to be preserved. We need to make sure that three years down the line, it doesn’t get to the stage where they dominate and dictate to us,”
El Kasmi’s target is to grow visitor numbers from last year’s 105,000 to 150,000 in two years’ time.
The average spend of visitors to Morocco is around $100 a day, and the average seven-day package costs ú350-ú450, based on scheduled flights, or ú300 for charter product.
n UK visitor numbers for 1998 went up by 26% to 105,000, from 83,000 in 1997.