Morocco Savvy

Budget airline Clickair joins the low cost market between Spain and Morocco, which is also good news for Eastern European tourists.

The Spanish budget airline Clickair has announced that it will start services from Barcelona to Casablanca and Marrakech from April 1.

Clickair will also start flying between Barcelona and Moscow from May 1, opening a cheap corridor for Russian visitors to Morocco. The airline already connects Eastern European cities like Bucarest, Budapest, Prague and Warsaw to Barcelona.

The airline, which is partly owned by Spanish flag carrier Iberia, started operating last May.

• Clickair joins Atlas Blue, Easyjet and Spanair in the market

Agadir’s share of the British market is still insignificant - time to start serving British food in Irish pubs?

An impressive increase in the number of charter flights into Agadir airport raised the city’s profile in the UK and upped its hotel occupancy rates with more than 10 percent - but there’s still a world to be won.

Today’s L’Economiste newspaper highlights the success of deals with UK tour operators like First Choice, Thomas Cook and Thomson. The occupancy rate of Agadir’s classified hotels went up from 58 percent in 2005 to 64 percent in 2006.

Some 77,000 Brits found their way to Agadir last year. The paper puts that number into perspective, pointing out that the UK and Ireland account for more than 60 million holidays every year. Agadir’s share of that market, L’Economiste says, is “insignificant”.

“Other than the sea and excursions, the city has little to offer British tourists,” the paper adds. One British expat in Agadir offers some advice: “British visitors like to find a bit of home where they travel”. His idea: more pubs and more British food in the restaurants.

Part of the popularity of the Canary Islands among Brits, L’Economiste writes, is that they have “reproduced a lot of British habits” on their shores.

• Follow the news over at Newscanarias.net for a few days and then tell us whether that strategy is a good idea

The Moroccan train timetable gets a complete overhaul later this year, with almost 100 new services added to the schedule.

In a statement released today, the railway company ONCF says that the number of train services will be gradually increased from 147 to 240. The first of these new services are being introduced before the summer, the company added.

The new trains will be added on ONCF’s main lines: Tangier to Casablanca, Fes to Marrakech and Casablanca to Marrakech. Travel times should be reduced thanks to the increase of services, the company says.

This year also sees the completion of renovation work at several stations, most notably Asilah, Mohammedia, Rabat Ville, Salé Ville and Marrakech. Work will start at Casablanca Port and Fes stations.

ONCF had a good year in 2006. The company transported 23.5 million passengers, 12 percent more than in 2005. This year, some 5 billion dirham (US$ 590 million) is being invested in infrastructure and rolling stock, the statement says.

Over 800 unlicensed guides were arrested in Fes during 2006, the local tourism police says.

The tourism brigade in Fes arrested 840 people last year for fraud and impersonating an official guide, Moroccan news agency MAP says.

These so-called “faux guides” do not have the necessary license to act as tourist guides. Most of the unlicensed guides were arrested in or near Fes’ tourist hotspots like hotels, monuments, souks and the train station.

The tourism brigade of the local police was set up specifically to protect foreign visitors from fraud and other harassment.

Hoping to up its share of foreign tourists, one of Morocco’s oldest spas gets a new marketing strategy. 

Health and wellness is the latest trend in tourism. Visitors no longer just fly to a country to see its natural and cultural highlights, they now often include therapies and treatments into their holidays.

In Morocco, that doesn’t just mean a well-deserved treat in a luxurious hammam. For years, visitors from France have been loyal patients of Moroccan dentists. 

Getting dental surgery in Morocco is much cheaper than in France. Plus, a lot of dentists in the country were trained in France, which reassures most foreign patients about the standard of the treatments.

Sadly, a plastic surgeon from Rabat tells Al Bayane newspaper, medical tourism is still “in its infancy” in Morocco. While other countries like Tunisia and Egypt are experiencing a boom, he says, Morocco still needs to get into the face-lift frenzy.

A message that hasn’t been wasted on the wellness industry in Morocco. Not a single hotel is being built or renovated without some form of spa, hammam or thalassatherapy center included in the project.

Meanwhile, Morocco’s original wellness destinations, hot springs like Oulmès, Sidi Harazem and Moulay Yacoub, fail to attract foreign tourists.

Less than 10 percent of Moulay Yacoub’s visitors are foreigners, L’Economiste writes. Reason for the resort’s owners, Groupe CDG, to come up with a new marketing strategy for the thermal bath near Fes.

Tour operators will be enticed to include a day of beauty, wellness or health at Moulay Yacoub in their holiday packages. The resort will be rebranded as a wellness center around its natural hot springs that are said to have beneficial effects for a variety of conditions, from rhumatoid to skin problems.

Groupe CDG is also studying the feasibility of shuttle buses between the spa resort and hotels in Fes to make it easier for visitors to reach the place.

The entrance fee for Moulay Yacoub’s baths has recently been increased from 90 dirham to 100 dirham (US$ 12).

The building of a new beach resort in Saïdia is an “ecological bomb”, says a local environmentalist group.

The Eastern Solidarity and Cooperation Group (ESCO), based in Oujda, accuses the developers of Saïdia’s new beach resort of “a true massacre” of the environment. In a statement, ESCO says that bulldozers, trucks and heavy equipment have caused serious damage to the area’s flaura and fauna.

The group accuses the resort’s developer, Spanish conglomerate Fadesa, of “irresponsible and uncivilized” behavior, saying the company has “no other interest than a quick profit”.

Fadesa, the group says, has also caused the retreat of the sand dunes and large chunks of the beaches that lined the coast in the development zone. ECSO warns that Saïdia’s beach “has already started to disappear”.

The group’s claims are supported by scientists at Oujda university.

The destruction of the dunes and the trees that live in them, are disrupting the ecosystem, one of them tells Moroccan newspaper L’Economiste, adding that the construction of a new port at Saïdia is changing the currents around the coast, further damaging the area’s environment.

Fadesa, another scientist tells L’Economiste, has started this project without proper scientific studies into the ecological consequences. “There could be numerous effects,” Abdelkader Sbai warns. ”We must contain them.”

Authorities told the newspaper that the “balance of nature” in the Saïdia project is being monitored “scrupulously”.

Saïdia Mediterranea is one of six massive new beach resorts being built under Morocco’s ambitious plan to attract 10 million tourists by 2010. The other resorts are planned at locations near Agadir, Essaouira, Larache, El Jadida and Guelmim.