Magical Morocco conjures allure

The country is striving to charm Chinese with streamlined visa procedures and promotions

Morocco. Monaco.

Even their Chinese names (respectively, moluoge and monage) are similar enough that many people from the Middle Kingdom confuse them.

But the North African nation aspires to truly set itself apart from the European principality in more than name in the minds of Chinese travelers.

That is, to prove it's not a case of tomato and tomaaato, but of apples and oranges.

While Monaco has long lured luxury travelers from China, Morocco remains less known.

Only 10,000 of China's 100 million outbound travelers visited Morocco last year. That's 0.01 percent.

The country aspires to lure 100,000 annually in the near future and twice that by 2020, Tourism Minister Lahcen Haddad says.

Policies will be implemented to help Chinese get visas within a week and streamline the overall process, he says.

It's mostly a question of putting it on Chinese tourists' map, officials believe.

"Morocco is a very fascinating country with 3,500 kilometers of beaches, with mountains, with different languages from different nationalities," Haddad says.

"We will try to know the Chinese culture and habits of Chinese tourists."

Morocco will also employ Chinese service personnel to satisfy visitors' needs, he adds.

Its allure was demonstrated when Rabat and Fez pushed out such competitive cities as Washington and Los Angeles in the United States to host the Beijing-based World Tourism Cities Federation's annual summit in late September.

The meeting will help put Morocco on Chinese itineraries, the 151-member federation's deputy general secretary, Li Baochun, believes.

Casablanca is the Moroccan city best known in China, thanks to the eponymous 1943 film. The next best-known destination is the Sahara desert because of Chinese author San Mao's 1976 book, The Stories of the Sahara, says the Moroccan tourist office in China's chief representative, Khalid Fathi.

"If you go to three or four places, the window that we have on the world is Marrakech," Haddad says. "I think the second-most beautiful place is the ancient city Fez and the Sahara desert."

Fez is a labyrinth of 9,300 cramped lanes, many of which dead-end. People still live in the stone buildings that date to the ninth century.

Morocco will host large-scale promotional events in Beijing and Shanghai next year to generate awareness about lesser-known sites like Fez and the country in general.

Major Chinese travel agencies such as Beijing-based China International Travel Service, Beijing Utour International Travel Service Co and China Youth Travel Service now offer packages to Morocco.

"Bookings have been brisk," China International Travel Service President Yu Ningning says.

She says more than 1,200 Chinese have signed up since the tours were launched on Aug 4. The 10-day trips are currently sold out, she says.

Popular routes include stops in other countries, since there are no direct flights between China and Morocco.

A nine-day trip that combines Dubai and Morocco, and a 16-day journey through Spain, Portugal and Morocco have been developed by Yu's company, with Morocco as the main attraction.

"It's a long journey, so we throw in destinations that are more familiar to Chinese to make the package more fun and appealing," she explains.

Chinese usually stop in Istanbul or Paris before transferring to Casablanca. The flight takes over 20 hours, including transfer times, each way. Chartered flights will likely run in the future, officials say.

Morocco is popular among Europeans, especially the French. The country receives more than 10 million inbound tourists a year and is striving to rank among the world's top 20 destinations, the federation's deputy secretary-general, Yan Han, says.

The ambition is to attract 20 million visitors, which will generate $18.2 billion in revenue by 2020, Xinhua News Agency reports.

Travelers are drawn to the rugged mountains and dunes, and Arabic and European architecture.

"A lot of people come to Morocco because of its cities, because of its ancient culture, because of its fortresses, because of the diversity of its culture," Haddad says.

There's a good reason the United Nations' World Tourism Organization classifies the country as a "cultural destination", he explains.

Each place in the country has its own culture. People in the north know Spanish, while natives of every corner speak Arabic and French. And many have a working knowledge of English.

And Moroccan peddlers, increasingly, greet Chinese with "ni hao".

yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/23/2015 page23)