Moroccan Dreams: Oriental Myth, Colonial Legacy by Claudio Minca & Lauren Wagner

Author:Claudio Minca & Lauren Wagner [Minca, Claudio & Wagner, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Africa, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, General
ISBN: 9781786730176
Google: oemKDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-08-02T11:18:24+00:00

Nowhere in Morocco is the investment in tourism more evident than in Marrakech. Under the aegis of Vision 2010, the Master Plan launched by King Mohammed VI in 2000 (and announced at a conference in Marrakech – see Chapter 2), the tourism infrastructure of this region has increased dramatically. As part of this mandate, since 2004 Marrakech has undergone massive urban renewal projects to reorganize city spaces as a Moroccan tourist product par excellence. This renewal has included a complete remodelling of the airport, which is now a key international gateway for low-cost flights from Europe. Marrakech has more than doubled its hotel capacity between 2001 and 2008 (Rouyaume du Maroc and Administration du Tourisme 2011). The devotion of infrastructure resources to tourist accommodation has had clear impacts on the city and its resident population, including effects like water shortages in response to hotels needing to fill swimming pools and fountains. Tourist expansion has also resulted in more sprawling urbanization in the area of Marrakech, as former residents of the old medina relocate outside the city to make way for boutique hotels (Kurzac-Souali 2006).

Tourist development in Marrakech has also translated into a widely remarked boom in property acquisition by foreign nationals. According to McGuinness:

Capital, a popular television program focusing on brands and entrepreneurs on the trendy M6 channel, ran a feature on the handful of young French people who had restored Marrakech houses as up-scale restaurants and romantic retreats. Within weeks – the urban legend goes – planefuls of Parisians were seeking property to renovate in the médina of Marrakech and the outlying palmeraie. (2007: 123)

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