beverages : Casa Flag Special beer
(235 million bottles consumed per
year); Sidi Ali mineral water (200
million bottles)
Moroccans are avid Facebook users,
spending more time per visit (30
minutes) than Americans (23 minutes)
or Japanese users (16 minutes).
tourism has more than doubled since 2002, low-cost European
airlines are servicing more Moroccan airports, and the new
‘Plan Azur’ to create six coastal resort magnets for tourism is
well underway. In the past decade, tourism has handily
overtaken agriculture and fishing as Morocco’s main
occupation, and services represent over half of Morocco’s GDP, ahead of industry (mainly
textile production) and phosphate mining (mostly in Western Sahara).
All this has changed everything and nothing about Morocco, which has been a crossroads
culture for 1000 years. In the souqs, you’ll still hear carpet salesmen delivering their best one-
liners – but now they’re in Arabic, Berber, French, Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese,
German and Russian. Many historic family homes in Moroccan medinas have been converted to
guesthouses, where mint tea is ceremoniously poured for new arrivals in time-honoured
hospitality.
Your visit couldn’t be better timed: with tourism still in development, your choices shape
Morocco’s future. Tourism could mean more golf courses that strain local resources, or cultural
tourism that rewards communities for conservation of local landmarks and traditions. Spending
a day in Morocco’s pristine countryside is even more helpful. The UN estimates that for every
eight to 10 tourists who visit an urban area, one job is created locally, while in rural areas those
tourists represent six or seven essential new job opportunities. Even short visits have an
outsized impact, since the average traveller expenditure for a splashy Marrakesh weekend is
equivalent to three or four months’ salary for most Moroccans (about €900). For the 50% of
Morocco’s population that’s under 25, opportunities to interact with visitors and practise foreign
languages are key preparations to join Morocco’s increasingly competitive and cosmopolitan
workforce.
Morocco’s Tangled Web
Royal rose gardens are lined with internet kiosks, cybercafe screens shield couples smooching
via Skype, and commentators discuss breaking news in Libya via Twitter: welcome to Morocco,
home of techie trend-setters.
Social-media adoption has accelerated across Morocco, often outpacing political controls.
After limiting access to YouTube, Google Earth, LiveJournal and other sites, Morocco’s 2010
ranking on Reporters without Borders’ Press Freedom Index plummeted to 135 out of 178
countries.
Yet as Morocco’s new National Press Syndicate reported in 2010, Moroccans’ preferred
information source is now the internet; some 8950 internet cafes were registered in 2009. To
find the latest hot topics in the the Moroccan blogosphere visit http://maroc-blogs.com.
Democratic Reforms
At the urging of human-rights advocates, the extreme measures
of Hassan II’s ‘Years of Lead’ have been curbed by Mohammed
VI. Today Morocco has one of the cleaner recent human-rights
records in the Middle East and Africa, with a commission to
investigate political prisoners’ mistreatment. But public demand
for greater democratic participation, poverty alleviation and press freedoms has outpaced
government liberalisation efforts, prompting nationwide demonstrations in 2011 demanding
reforms. .