The Director-General of the Moroccan National Tourism Office (ONMT), Adel El Fakir, travels between a number of capitals of the world, in a race against time, in order to revive the Moroccan tourism sector, but to no avail.
Adel El Fakir changes his ties, but does not change his speech with officials of airlines, travel agencies, and tour operators such as "EasyJet" and "ABTA". The same repeated rhetoric that does not convince anyone, as in his meetings with the officials of "Ryanair" and "Iberia".
A source from within the Ministry of Tourism said that the man is distinguished by an elegant but unconvincing speech to international tourism actors, which prompted the Minister of Tourism, Fatima Zahra Amour, to ask questions about the results of these meetings, which have yielded nothing so far.
According to the same source, most airlines or travel agencies promised to maintain a minimum level of marketing for destinations in the Kingdom of Morocco in the absence of clear commitments from the Moroccan government.
Although Adel El Fakir does not have a magic solution to restore confidence among major travel agencies and airlines in the destination of Morocco, because he does not have the political decision to do so, one of the investors in the tourism sector criticizes the absence of a clear plan from El Fakir to save the sector after he has brought Moroccan tourism to the point of near "bankruptcy".
This investor added in a talk with "Assahifa" that tourism in Morocco needs at least four years of effort and hard work to return to what it was before the Covid-19 pandemic.
At a time when the sector needs a mature marketing plan, the Moroccan National Tourism Office relies on the superficial easy plan that relies on influencers on social media in a desperate attempt to revive domestic tourism, a plan that the same investor described as “lazy”, as it relies on the plans of Unthoughtful promotional and contains a lot of dullness.
In light of a lot of confusion in managing the sector, which needs a lot of creativity and thoughtful work to save it, it seems that the Director-General of the Moroccan National Tourism Office builds all his strategy on appearing in the media and drawing up a marketing plan that includes a lot of improvisation, which was evident in the launch of a number of Advertising campaigns that lack creativity.
In addition to all this, there are other negative factors that the Moroccan National Tourism Office did not know how to deal with, among these factors are hotel offers, which are among the most expensive in the world compared to competitive markets, where the prices of Moroccan hotels are considered exaggerated compared to the services and the tourist product provided.
This is in addition to the unhealthy environment that accompanies the tourist from his arrival in Morocco until his departure, where randomness abounds with regard to tourist transportation, irregular bazaars, and restricting tourist offers to festive activities or “selling the Agadir sun” to Europeans without diversifying the offers, although Morocco is a country with natural, cultural, heritage, and historical richness that enables it to diversify its offers, instead of limiting itself to seeing one dry product that the National Tourism Office and the Ministry of Tourism are trying to market on Morocco.
