Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

There are demands and potentials for a promising development of rural tourism in Morocco, but due to a lack of organisation up until 2000, the offer has remained limited. A tourist boom is currently underway countrywide, with numerous projects developed rather anarchically and involving a multitude of actors with a focus on heritage and local products.
This tourism is generating great hopes as a tool to increase cash income, particularly in marginalised areas. The development of rural tourism requires a territorial approach. Based on several case studies we hypothesise that the success of a rural tourism project is bound to the degree of appropriation by local people. It prompts two questions: (i) what are the relationships and the articulations between top-down and bottom-up initiatives? (ii) Is this tourism venture conducted according to a territorial logic: are all the stakeholders equally involved in planning, developing and commercial activities across the rural tourism continuum? These case studies are representative of the national context in terms of actors’ involvement, project planning, partnership, stakeholders, and relationships between initiatives at the regional level. In addition, the provisional conclusions drawn from this can be used to follow further development of this activity