4 - Tourist arrivals in Morocco registered in January a rise of 11% in comparison to the same period of last year, according to figures released by the Tourism Ministry and the National Tourism Observatory.

Some 409,146 tourists visited the North African kingdom during this period with the French topping the list with 134,875 tourists, followed by the Spaniards (105,994), the British (22,039), the Italians (20,000), the Belgians (18,724), the Germans (15,406) and the Dutch (12,509).

These figures also show that guest nights in classified hotels posted a 5% decrease, reaching some 1Mn bed nights, against 1.14Mn nights last year.

This decrease was offset slightly by a 17% increase in guest nights spent by local tourists, which reached some 232,456 guest nights in January.

Except the cities of Marrakech and Agadir, which posted a 12% and 10% decrease respectively, all other tourist destinations receive more tourists. Rabat topped the list with 12%, followed by Casablanca and Fez (center) (+5% respectively) and Tangiers (+2%).

The room occupancy rate has decreased 4 points, reaching 38%, compared to 42% in the same period of 2007.

Travel receipts reached some USD 566Mn in January against USD 642Mn during the same period of last year, i.e. an 11.8% decrease.

Morocco has developed an ambitious strategy, dubbed "Vision 2010", aimed at attracting 10 million tourists by 2010. This strategy provides for creating 160,000 beds, thus bringing the national capacity to 230,000 beds. It also aims to create some 600,000 new jobs.