Morocco woos Indian tourists

The North African nation of Morocco, bordering the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on Monday opened a full-fledged Moroccan National Tourism Office here in a bid to woo Indian tourists.

"Morocco has a lot of potential in the tourism sector," Mohammed Sajid, the Moroccan Minister of Tourism, Air Transport, Handicraft and Social Economy, said at an event to mark the office's inauguration.

"We (Morocco and India) are open to each other's cultures," Sajid said, adding that "we can learn a lot from each other's tourism sectors and create jobs".

According to Sajid, the new office in New Delhi will help Morocco in planning various strategic promotional and awareness programmes to tap the robust tourism sector in India.

He said that his ministry and the Indian Tourism Ministry also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) earlier in the day.

"We are going to sign an agreement on air transport between Air India and Royal Air Maroc," Sajid stated.

Stating that Morocco has 17 tourism promotion offices in the world, Adel El Fakir, Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Moroccan National Tourist Office, said that the newest office in New Delhi "is a very strategic office for us".

"We had 1.3 billion tourists last year," El Fakir said.

Tourism remains a vital pillar of the Moroccan economy and the country's second biggest employer after agriculture.

Indian tourists are known to be among the world's highest-spending globetrotters.

"Their spending power has been estimated to be four times that of the Chinese and Japanese which justifies the need for a planned strategic campaign for Morocco in India," the Moroccan Embassy here said in a statement.

--IANS

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