With the economic downturn hitting Moroccan tourism, the country has become the first in the world to launch a campaign aimed at reviving its tourism economy. The "therapy" website was launched today and not only is the initiative timely - it is extremely funny!The Morocco Therapy website is beautifully designed and comes with its own doctor. It is available in English, French and Spanish. After an introduction by the good Doctor Karam, you are invited to take a rather bizarre test to see just what ails you. Then it is on to the diseases.
As you will discover, if you are suffering from any of the following diseases, then Morocco Therapy has the cure. Just click on a disease to see what we mean!
The associated website (Visit Morocco) has a collection of deals and offers from around 30 holiday companies that operate in Morocco. On offer are also some pretty good discounts for example: a week in Agadir for £419, or three nights in a five-star hotel in Marrakesh for £359.
Over recent weeks reports suggest that British tourism has declined by some 15% on the usual numbers. According to the Times Online, Spain is in a worse position and have reported a drop of 20 per cent - or 148,000 - British travellers in the same period.
This year is set to be even worse for overseas travel, prompting the move by Morocco - an initiative sure to be followed by other countries in the next few weeks.
The Moroccan Tourist Board is spending £2m on an advertising campaign in Britain as well as launching the website. "No-one can tell what the future is looking like - it is very hard to predict," said Aziz Mnii, deputy director of the UK office.
"This is a crisis campaign - we want to put Morocco upfront of people thinking of which destination to visit."
Morocco will be boosted by the launch next month of a new airline operating flights from Gatwick, Times Online can reveal. Air Arabia Morocco will start five flights a week to Casablanca, with plans to operate to Marrekesh later this year.
The country's state airline, Royal Air Maroc, will also create a new premium economy class on its flights from Gatwick to Marrakesh next month.
The need for new air services is imperative after the sale of GB Airways to easyJet last year, and a subsequent scaling back of flights.
The crisis is hightened further by the planned opening of a series of new top-end resorts in Morocco in 2009, the first of which open on the Med coast and south of Casablanca in June.
Ali El Kasmi, director of the UK tourist office, said Morocco hoped to pick up British tourists who might otherwise head for long-haul destinations such as the Caribbean or Indian Ocean.
"We will change the offers and deals every week," he told Times Online. "We will start with 15 tour operators but can put up to 300 deals on the website. We plan the site to run for six months but can also extend it if necessary."
4 comments:
The web site takes so long to load even with Broad Band. Who did the design? Did it not occur to them that the public will not sit and wait whilst the web site appears on the screen. To much info is slowing it down.
Hi Piggy,
Thanks for the comment. We have had no problem loading the page. It loads fast on all our machines. Maybe you have a local issue or it could have been while they were doing work on the site. It only came online half an hour before we posted the story and they were still tweaking it.
Cheers
TVFF team
LOL! What a lovely idea! Hats off to the innovative thinking -- and may it be very successful in getting people to visit this beautiful destination!
I didn't have a problem loading it either. I think it's a tremendous site - wonderful to see such humour. I hope it works!
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