Morocco Image Crisis : Tourism: Bogus guides, rapacious bazaar merchants and double-booked hotel rooms are discouraging high-spending visitors from Europe.

Although officially Moroccan tourism is booming, people in the trade are worried.

Travel agents fear that reports of bogus guides, rapacious bazaar merchants and double-booked hotel rooms will discourage high-spending visitors from Europe.

Tourism Minister Moussa Saadi, speaking at a recent tourist trade exhibition in Casablanca, said that the number of foreign visitors rose last year by 27% to a record 2.15 million.

Moroccan newspapers, however, said that figure does not tell the whole story. According to their reports, the trade is in crisis.

The Rabat opposition daily L’Opinion said that more than 1 million of last year’s visitors came from North Africa, including more than 900,000 from Algeria. Algerians have flooded into Morocco since the border was reopened in May, 1988, after a 12-year closure.

“Algerians come to Morocco on shopping sprees to buy food, blue jeans, razor blades and things like that,” one travel agent said. “Many of them don’t even stay in a hotel, but sleep in their cars.”

However, the numbers of French, Spanish, British and West German tourists is down. There were 4% fewer French visitors, 11% fewer Spaniards, 12% fewer Britons and 2% fewer West Germans.

“This is a problem, not only because they are traditionally the biggest contingent, but also because they spend much more, stay in the best hotels,” the travel agent said.

In the southern city of Marrakech, ringed by date palms against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains, hotels averaged only 50% occupancy in December. In previous years they had been booked solid months in advance.

“For the first time since I have been in business there was room at the inn in Marrakech at Christmas and New Years,” complained a veteran tour operator specializing in packages for Britons.

“Marrakech used to be the ‘in’ place for jet-setters on winter vacation,” he said. “Now they are reluctant to come and I think it is mainly because they are pestered to death by hordes of hustlers, so-called guides, pickpockets and beggars.”

“I’ve seen little old ladies so scared they dare not get out of the bus when they are touring the historic monuments,” said Marrakech resident Abdullah Stouky.

West of Marrakech, the seaside resort of Agadir boasts 300 days of sunshine a year and draws visitors from Northern Europe all year long.

“People come once,” West German tour operator Dieter Roland said, “but only about 3% ever come back.”

He said clients complained of exorbitant prices for food and drink, hotels that took bookings when they were already full, sloppy service and harassment by self-appointed guides hoping for kickbacks on sales of shoddy handicrafts who entice tourists into bazaars.

L’Opinion devoted a full page to publish six articles on the problem of bogus guides, saying their numbers had risen in a disturbing and alarming way over the past 10 years.

“God only knows how many ‘guides’ there are looking for easy prey. They are all over the place--at hotels, stations, markets,” wrote Lahcen Azzabi, blaming widespread unemployment for the problem.

Government policy is to recommend that tourists use only official guides, distinguishable by special brass badges.

The Casablanca daily al-Bayane said tourists were regarded as pigeons to be plucked. It listed lamentable practices that it said were the fault of professionals in the trade, not the government:

“Overbooking, swindles by guides and bazaars, harassment by street vendors, shameful restaurant bills, prohibitive taxi fares, bureaucratic vexations, failure to fulfill promises and sudden increases in tariffs given to tour operators.”

Al-Bayane said the “detestable image” of those working in tourism was turning foreigners away from the country.

Morocco, only three hours away from European capitals, has a huge tourism potential, with ancient walled cities such as imperial Fez and Marrakech, romantic kasbahs (crenelated castles) and oases in the south, lakes and spectacular mountain scenery, in addition to a string of seaside resorts such as Agadir and Tangier.

Official statistics put hotel capacity at the end of 1988 at more than 135,000 beds, including more than 110,000 in the up-market luxury category. The Liwa group in the United Arab Emirates has agreed to spend $247 million on five more luxury hotels.

Foreign exchange earned from tourism quadrupled to more than $1 billion between 1981 and 1988, making it the third major source, after the phosphate industry and remittances by emigrant workers.

A Tourism Ministry official, who asked not to be identified, said: “Of course, we know about the guide problem. It is serious but it is a very delicate problem. We are doing our best because, as you know, there is a lot at stake.”