Egypt: Morocco Bids to Replace Turkey, Egypt as Russian Tourist Destination

The North African kingdom wants to quintuple the number of Russian tourists within three years. 31 March 2016

Additional nations are seeking to exploit Egypt’s and Turkey’s tourism woes by making inroads into the Russian sun-and-sand package tour business.

Morocco has joined the race, revealing plans to attract far larger numbers of Russian tourists, Moroccan Minister of Tourism Lahcen Haddad says.

“Russia offers us a large opportunity. We want to increase the number of arrivals from Russia by 400 %, from 40,000 per year to 200,000 per year, over three years,” Haddad says as reported by Bloomberg.

Talks are in evolution between Russia’s major air carrier Aeroflot and Royal Air Maroc to establish new routes from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Marrakesh and Agadir – major tourism destinations in the North African kingdom.

The instability across much of North African and the Middle East, accompanied by high-profile attacks on foreign tourists in once popular destinations like Tunisia and Egypt, has taken a major toll on the region’s resorts. Although it has remained largely free of such attacks, Morocco too has felt the pinch. Business from its biggest travel market, France, fell 7 % last year, and in general tourism revenue slipped 1.3 % to about $6 billion, Bloomberg says.

Last month the Moroccan government announced plans to spend some $2 million on advertising its resorts in Russia.

Tourism accounts for about 10 % of Morocco’s $105 billion economy and employs 400,000 people, according to Bloomberg.

The industry got a large boost from an open-skies agreement with Europe in 2005 that opened Moroccan airports to flights from the EU, helping boost a 15-year increase spurt during which tourist numbers additional than doubled, the Financial Times says.

In mid-March Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Morocco’s King Mohammed VI for talks on a closer strategic partnership. Twelve agreements on tourism cooperation were part the documents signed during the visit, Sputnik reports.

Turkey and Egypt were the top two destinations for Russian tourists until the flow came to a sudden halt following the October 2015 terrorist attack on a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, killing all 224 aboard, and the Kremlin’s ban on most travel to Turkey in retaliation for Turkish planes shooting down a Russian jet in November 2015.

Following this week’s hijacking to Cyprus of an EgyptAir flight, Russian authorities ruled out resuming flights to Egypt.

Albania, although a minnow in the tourism pond compared with Morocco, is as well making a bid for Russian visitors. Russian tourism officials “appreciate the fact that Albania is not touched by the refugee crises,” national tourism agency director Ardit Collaku tells Balkan Insight.

In 2014 Albania lifted visa requirements for Russians during peak summer months.