Agreement to build 20 economy hotels

The Moroccan Government has signed an agreement with 3 operators to construct 20 economy hotels, with investments of MAD 844 million. The 2 and 3 star hotels will be built in several Moroccan cities by 3 groups - American, French and Moroccan - and will be managed by Louvres Hotels, owned by American group Starwood.

Tourism stats

2008 was a record year for tourism in Morocco with more than 8 million visitors (increase of 7% on 2007); the month of August alone totalising 1.368 million passengers. Morocco aims to bring in 10 million tourists by 2010. From the figures of the Tourism Observatory on overnight stays in hotels emerges that, in the first ten months of the year, the sharpest drop was registered in tourists from the UK, -21%, followed by those from Belgium (-13%), France (-8%) and Italy (-7%). These negative results are partially compensated by tourism from the Arab Countries (+18%), the Netherlands (+33%) and Spain (+8%).