Rabat - Around 5 million tourists visited Morocco over January-July 2009, an increase of 8% compared with the same period of last year, the tourism department reported.

The French tourists topped the list with 1.94 million (+8%), followed by the Spaniards (1.11 million, + 14 %), the Belgians (291,000, +16 %), the Dutch (273,000, +14 %), the Germans (259,000, +4 %), the Britons (209,000, -10 %) and the Italians (186,000, +10 %). The arrivals of Scandinavian tourists showed a stagnation.

The rise had no impact on the number of overnight stays which slipped by 2%, reaching some 9.5 million against 9.66 million a year earlier.

The drop in overnight stays is due to the decrease posted by the French market (-5%) and the British (-18%), which represent 81% of the drop. As for the Spanish and Arab markets, they showed a rise of 3% and 4% respectively

Sounds good ,lets hope things improve as the tourism like other area is suffering the effect of the global recession .

morocco is copying china in promoting tourism to the small villages , and this is a very clever idea , seems to be fruitful
the small villages are thriving , hand made products (carpets , pottery, clothes , traditional food ) are things tourists enjoy

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I wish this was the case ! unfortunately we are copying Spain building large hotels on the coasts without any planning or consideration for the environment …I hope we take time to see what is happening in Spain now & learn a lesson .

We will be right if we promote rural tourism & local products its what Morocco needs & we have the ingredients to make it providing we plan & controll ! we need to promote an Eco & responsible tourism !

morocco just realised that tourists don t want to see Mcdonalds , and sparkly environments
and promoting rural tourism had started a little late but it has a lot of potential .

I do not see any evidance of Morocco promoting rural tourism yet ! they are still talking about the PAT (Pay d'acceuil touristique) but this is in embryonic stage ....
There is a lot of work to be done if Morocco wanted to promote the country side ,lets take Marrakech for example the star destination in Morocco & look at its splendid countryside you find that we have a beautiful national park but no maps ,signages or informations provided ...........