TTG – Luxury Travel News

The Virgin Limited Edition hotel is due to fully reopen in October after a revamp, although its six new three-bedroom riads were due to debut a few months earlier this month.

Morocco’s resilience as a tourist destination is demonstrated by a record year for international tourists in 2023, despite the earthquake, with total arrivals reaching 14.5 million. This represents a 34% increase compared to 2022 and also represents a 12% increase from the pre-Covid-19 year.

This upward momentum has also continued into 2024 with visitor numbers up 13% year-on-year to 3.3 million during the first three months of the year.

The country has ambitious expansion plans with a short-term goal of reaching 17.5 million tourists annually by 2026, and then 26 million by 2030, when it is set to host the World Cup alongside European neighbours Spain and Portugal.

flying at high altitudes

While Marrakech continues to largely dominate demand for luxury travel to Morocco, the country hopes to expand its appeal to other destinations including Agadir, Fez, Tangier, Casablanca and Essaouira on the Atlantic coast.

New flights and routes are crucial to this strategy, with capacity between the UK and Morocco set to rise by 49% this summer to 864,000 seats compared to 581,000 seats in summer 2023, according to aviation data from OAG.

British Airways has just launched a route from Gatwick to Agadir for the first time in more than a decade. But much of this air expansion is being led by Ryanair, which will introduce seven new routes from the UK to Morocco this summer, including a service from Manchester to its new base in Tangier.

Other new Ryanair routes include flights to Agadir from Birmingham, Bournemouth and Edinburgh. This will be followed next winter by Jet2.com’s entry into Morocco for the first time with up to 17 weekly flights from six UK airports to Marrakech and Agadir from October 2024.

The airline and tour operator are offering these flights year-round as part of a five-year deal with the Moroccan National Tourist Office, which includes joint marketing campaigns for the destination.

Welcome Add-ons

Luxury tour operators have welcomed these additional flights to Morocco, particularly new routes from regional airports in the UK, which will make the destination more attractive to customers living outside London and the South East.

“Peak travel times fill up quickly,” says Susan McGorry, product manager for Audley Travel in Morocco. “Jet2.com serves regional airports in the UK, so this will help open up the destination to a wider range of customers living outside the south of England.”

“More regional routes are always welcome, and it would be useful for multi-centre holidays to have better connections in the north of the country – Fez or Tangier,” adds Patrick Millar of Kerker.

Favorite Hotels List

Naturally, adding all these flights will increase demand for luxury hotels, and there is a raft of new openings this year across the country to tempt discerning clients.

Notable openings include The View Agadir, which opened in March and offers 272 rooms and suites, as well as direct access to the city’s beach on the Atlantic coast.

Meanwhile, Royal Mansour, which has run its iconic Marrakech hotel since 2010, has unveiled a new hotel in Casablanca. The renovated 149-room hotel is housed in a historic 1950s building and features a 23rd-floor restaurant overlooking the city.

Among the hotels opening in Casablanca is the 133-room Radisson Casablanca Gauthier La Citadelle, which becomes the first Radisson-branded hotel in Morocco. The hotel is part of a major expansion plan for Radisson Hotel Group in the country, aiming to increase its presence from nine existing hotels to 25 by 2030.

Elsewhere, Four Seasons is set to open its fourth hotel in Morocco soon, Four Seasons Hotel Rabat at Qasr al Bahr. The hotel in the Moroccan capital will feature 200 rooms and suites in a restored former royal palace dating back to the 18th century.

And no one was left behind: Marrakech recently saw the opening of the boutique Hotel Iza, which opened just a week before the September earthquake. Fortunately, the 14-room hotel in the historic city suffered no structural damage, and in the days following the disaster, the hotel prepared emergency food packages for affected communities in the Atlas Mountains.

Similar to the city’s rapid recovery, Eza now has occupancy rates of between 85% and 90%. It has also started working with the trade through companies such as Black Tomato, Original Travel and Quintessentially Travel.

While there is a clear desire to encourage luxury visitors to travel to other parts of Morocco through new flights and resorts, the appeal of Marrakech and the nearby Atlas Mountains still dominates bookings for now.

“For our guests travelling to Morocco in 2024, Marrakech is the most popular entry point for a few days filled with cultural and culinary experiences, often followed by active adventures in the Atlas Mountains or Agafay Desert,” says Simon Lynch, global sales director at Scott Dunn. “For longer trips, our guests add Casablanca or Essaouira on the Atlantic coast.”

Beyond Marrakech

Some operators also seek to encourage customers to explore more of the country outside Marrakech by offering multi-centre tours to destinations such as Tangier, Rabat and Casablanca.

Most of our bookings are short trips into the city. [to Marrakech] “We aim to offer accommodation in the city, nearby resorts, or twin centres that combine desert and mountains such as Kasbah Tamadot,” says Sophie Jones of Elegant Resort. “There are clients who want to explore more, so we have great contacts in Morocco to help create bespoke itineraries, and we hope to do more of this with the recent launch of our Experiences booklet which includes a Jewels of Morocco itinerary.”

Despite the devastation caused by last year’s earthquake, Morocco is expected to become a tourist destination worth watching in the coming years with many new flights, hotels and other tourism developments. The country’s tourism ranking is also expected to rise as it prepares to host the World Cup in 2030.

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