While the tourist authorities may be over the moon about the advent of cheap flights to Fez, not everyone is convinced it is all sunshine and roses. Our Special Affairs reporter, Helen Ranger, examines the pros and cons.
NIMBY Not in my back yard
So there we were, sipping our sundowners under the citrus trees in the riad courtyard. Mellow conversation turned to Marrakech and how one of us had been there recently, after a gap of some four years. How much it’s changed! The relatively small (after Fez) medina seems to be almost entirely owned by foreigners. These foreigners all have cars. The locals, now that they have jobs provided by the foreigners, are buying cars too. The levels of pollution are growing hugely and it’s hot, little wind, becoming unbearable, another Bangkok in the making? And another thing, said a member of our little circle, where are the artisans? What happened to the group of wrought iron workers at the back of the medina, for example? They’ve gone. Now it’s all just shops, and not such excellent ones. And the foodstalls in Djemaa El Fna. Now they’re all regulated with numbers on the newly paved square, and all look the same, all serve the same food. What is happening?
Let’s take a closer look at these foreigners. Not only in the medina, but also in the vast swathes of palm groves outside the city where they live in mansions with swimming pools and servants. They don’t seem to integrate into the Moroccan way of life. They come into town only when they need to feed at a fancy French restaurant, and there are plenty of those. But it’s good to have nice places to go in the evening and it’s good for tourism, good for the city and good for Morocco.
What about the tourists? What kind of tourists do they have in Marrakech? I’ve heard that it’s really popular these days for pre-nuptial celebrations. They used to be called stag parties, held in the local pub on a Friday night, when the groom got a bit drunk before being tied down for ever. These days they start on Tuesday and end on Friday and the groom and his friends fly off in order to get seriously paralytic over a period of days. I’m not quite sure why. I’ve also heard that Marrakech is good for the girls too, especially those wanting a bit of fun in the sun with some dark-eyed handsome Arabs (or Berbers, anything will do). And of course, in Marrakech there’s plenty of action for anyone of any other persuasion too.
So there we were, sipping our sundowners under the citrus trees in the riad courtyard. Shudders of horror went through us all as we considered the problems of tourism in Marrakech. Hamdulillah, nothing so gross could possibly happen in Fez. After all, there aren’t the bars, the fancy restaurants and the type of hotels that will accept stag parties that last for days, or indeed, visits that last only an hour or two. Fez is an acquired taste, we told ourselves. Not everyone is going to enjoy it. And so we sit complacently, hoping and praying that it won’t happen. NIMBY.
Consider, then, the latest news item in the Morocco Times about the new Ryanair flights from Luton to Fez. Not just to Marrakech, as in the past. But to Fez. What does it mean? Who will we get? Will they want the Attarine and the Bouanania or will they want booze and short lets? Is there anything at all that anyone can do?
And who the hell are we, anyway? What right do we have to wish away money coming into a country that needs it, wish to prevent people earning money, wish to preserve the status quo like colonials of old? The jury’s out on this dilemma as far as I’m concerned. I’m confused.
The hard news - Ryanair to launch Marseille-Morocco flights
According to a report in Le Maroc, Europe's biggest low-cost carrier, Ryanair, will launch flights between Morocco and Europe at the end of October. Seven weekly flights will link Oujda in northeastern Morocco with Marseille, France, while three will fly out of the central city of Fes.
Links are also planned between Morocco and Frankfurt and London in the autumn, with tickets for Oujda to Marseille selling for EUR 23.99 one-way. Morocco is now linked with Croatia and Serbia, into the common European aviation zone.
In May Ryanair signed a five-year agreement with the government of Morocco to develop low-cost air access and tourism to the country from Ryanair's bases throughout Europe.
The agreement covered most of the regional airports in Morocco and involved the commitment by Ryanair to develop up to 20 routes delivering almost 1 million passengers per annum by the end of the five-year period.
"Morocco is a new market, a strategic market for our company," said a Ryanair official.
Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
1 comment:
it's a tricky issue. as an ex-foreign-fassia, i experienced a similar revulsion the first time i visited marrakesh after my first year of fes life, and honestly disliked it so much that i've never gone back. but here's the thing: tourism is tourism is tourism. we outsiders like to make little moral hierarchies amongst ourselves, you know, those of us who appreciate authentic culture vs. those other people who are just pleasure-seeking. but all of us, even the well-intentioned, love fes for something we feel it gives us that we were lacking wherever we came from, and we all influence the city to be more like our own dreams of it. all the restoration/preservation initiatives of the past century have changed fes as deeply as mass tourism will (perhaps more so), and not always for the better. i'm not trying to say there's no difference between the various ways of approaching a place from the outside, but that the lines we try to draw between them mostly serve to protect our own egos- we're quick to see what is exploitative or disrespectful in the behavior of others, but slow to see such things in ourselves. everyone who has had the good fortune to be a guest, whether transient or permanent, of fes over the years would do well to meditate on their own uses and misuses of her. (myself most of all- i don't mean this as a criticism of anyone, rather i'm musing on a problem which is of considerable interest to me.)
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