Morocco Savvy

Investment in and around Marrakech is reaching fever pitch - last year, the region attracted a record US$ 10.6 billion.

Three-quarters of that sum involves investments in the tourism sector, L’Economiste reports. The construction of a string of new hotels, spas, golf courses and holiday homes will generate about 40,000 jobs in the city over the next few years.

Moroccan investors like Atlas Hospitality (Royal Air Maroc’s chain of hotels) make up most of the future development. Close second are investors from the United Arab Emirates.

High-profile projects that were announced last year include:

• Morocco Film City, a film studio complete with movie theme park, film academy, shopping mall, hotels, luxury tourist residences, golf course, a Formula 1 race track, ATP-qualified tennis courts and two museums - a US$ 1.4 billion project funded by the Moroccan government and a group of foreign investors around Swedish media group Tritel (whose website, ominously, seems to have disappeared).
• Royal Ranches Marrakech, an equestrian center with racing track, villas and apartments set in a large park with artificial rivers and lakes, part of the US$ 1.4 billion “Gateway to Morocco” project proposed by Gulf Finance House from Bahrain.
• The Royal Palm Marrakech, a 5,000-bed luxury hotel, the first one to be built by Beachcomber Hotels outside Mauritius and the Seychelles, for a total investment of around US$ 210 million.

The total amount of projected investment over 2006 was 84 percent higher than the year before.

• You don’t need billions to enjoy Morocco

Good news for car drivers in Morocco. Almost 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) of road have been cleared of snow.

Exceptionally heavy snowfalls since last Friday made some roads pretty hard to navigate, particularly in the Atlas and Rif mountains. Although no roads were completely closed, traffic slowed to a crawl along many stretches.

The ministry of Transport announced today that snow crews had cleared most of the roads by this morning. With rising temperatures, most snow should disappear over the next few days.

• Nevertheless, be careful on the road

It’s a stupid pastime for some kids in Morocco to throw stones at tourists. In the latest incident, an elderly French woman was injured.

She wasn’t hurt that bad, although blood was running out of her ear. But the old lady was in tears. And she will take the story home as an ugly souvenir of her trip to Morocco.

In today’s Al Bayane newspaper, correspondent Mohamed Aboulasse recounts her story. Driving near Azemmour, just south of Casablanca, last Saturday, the car that she and her husband were in was hit by stones. One stone broke the car’s window on the passenger side and injured the woman.

The police are investigating the incident, but the damage has already been done, Al Bayane concludes.

“However rare,” the paper writes, “this kind of thing shouldn’t happen. The little thugs that are responsible for these absurd incidents can’t grasp the consequences of their actions.” 

“Imagine the bad publicity for our country that these people will take home with them.”

The solution, the paper says, isn’t just more police. Ordinary Moroccans should take their responsibility in stopping these kids from throwing stones.

Or all the government’s efforts to promote tourism could “collapse like a sand castle in the wink of an eye,” Aboulasse writes.

• Have you ever come under attack? Share your story

Anyone remember the shopping mall next to Casablanca Port station? It’s gone, demolished - Centre 2000 is no more.

The Moroccan railway company ONCF has started the demolition of one of Casablanca’s weirdest corners, the Centre 2000 next to Casablanca Port station. 

Built in the late Seventies, Centre 2000 was conceived as a modern shopping mall in the heart of the city. But lately, with the building left to rot amid a legal battle over its future, it became a popular hangout for street children and other homeless people. Shoppers weren’t charmed and stayed away.

Only train passengers waiting for their departure would have a quick coffee on one of the mall’s outdoor terraces.

That pit with terraces was a nice enough place to have a drink, but as you would look around, you couldn’t help wondering what the point of the place was.

The ONCF will use the land to expand the Casablanca Port station and build new headquarters for the company. The area around the station is being refurbished completely, with the Accor group building three hotels in the project, known as Casablanca City Center.

It took the railways almost six years to evict the 60 shopkeepers from Centre 2000. With the last legal challenge squashed in court, the bulldozers arrived this week.

• Still, Casablanca has its moments

Morocco’s roads killed more people in 2006 than the year before - but at least the numbers aren’t growing as fast as they used to.

Exactly 3,622 people died on Moroccan roads in 2006. That’s 4.1 percent more than the year before.

In a desperate search for some - any - good news in the road safety statistics, the ministry of Transport focuses on that last number. 

That 4.1 percent is down from the average increase in the death rate of 4.7 percent that Morocco recorded annually before 2004, the year the government introduced the Integrated Strategic Emergency Plan for road safety.

The increase in the number of deaths on the road is slowing. Government spin à la marocaine.

Le Matin, usually a bit of a mouthpiece for the Moroccan government, likens the numbers to “a civil war”.

Here goes:

• 56,426 road accidents with injuries (+ 5.2 percent)
• 3,622 people killed (+4.1 percent)
• 12,060 people seriously injured (+2.1 percent)
• 71,129 more people injured less seriously (+8.2 percent) 

That’s almost 10.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Surprisingly, when you look at that same “Population Death Rate“ for other countries, Morocco isn’t the outright league winner we’d expected it to be.

The chance of dying on the road in Morocco is roughly the same, statistically speaking, as in Spain, Austria, New Zealand and Luxemburg.

Countries with a higher death rate on the roads include Greece (19.3 per 100,000 inhabitants), Poland (15.0) and the United States - where 14.5 people per 100,000 inhabitants were killed on the roads in 2004.

It’s official: Morocco’s roads are safer than those in the US. That’s one popular myth that we’ve managed to debunk so far.

But be careful nonetheless. Especially on the roads around Marrakech, Agadir, Khouribga, Safi and El Jadida. In the statistics, these regions recorded the highest numbers of deaths on the road in 2006.

And be particularly prudent when driving somewhere around Fes. That’s where the increase in deaths caused by car accident exploded last year: 169 victims, up a staggering 47 percent from 2005.

• Time for a tough new road law

French authorities investigate complaints against Ryanair after the budget airline cancelled its new routes from Marseille to Morocco.

Last May, Ryanair announced new routes from Marseille to Fes, Marrakech and Oujda. As part of the highly publicized launch of the new services, Ryanair offered 3,000 tickets on the routes for just 1 eurocent.

Flights were scheduled to begin on November 1, but that date was soon moved to December. On November 16, the flights were cancelled indefinitely.

Ryanair claimed that France was dragging its feet in ratifying the “open skies” agreement with Morocco. That meant that the necessary licenses had just not materialized on time, the company said at the time.

A group of passengers who saw their flights cancelled have since sued Ryanair for misleading advertising, a charge now under scrutiny from French prosecutors, Aujourd’hui Le Maroc (paid access) writes.

Ryanair did apologize for the situation earlier this month, and says it has repaid all passengers. But the company continues to deny any responsibility for the fiasco.

“We could not have foreseen that France would delay the ratification at the last moment,” company spokesman Matthieu Glasson told French trade magazine TourMag two weeks ago.

Faced with the investigation, Glasson today accuses the French government of “deliberately trying to damage Ryanair” at a moment when Air France is launching cheap flights to Fes, Marrakech and Oujda itself. The spokesman denied that Ryanair misled its customers.

• Fortunately, Ryanair is not the only cheap carrier to Morocco