The Egyptian group "Picalbatros" acquired 4 hotels in Morocco during the current year, thereby increasing its hotel capacity to more than 2,600 hotel rooms in the kingdom, according to Kamel Abu Ali, the head of the group in an interview with "East", without disclosing the value of the deals.
The new hotels included in the group include "club Sango" with 349 rooms in Marrakech, which is the first tourist city in the country, in addition to "Palmyra Palace" and "golf hotel" with a total of 640 rooms in the same city, in addition to the hotel "Palace of roses" in Agadir with 410 rooms, and it is expected that some of these hotels will undergo renovation to open their doors to visitors next year.
"Picalbatros" is one of the largest tourist groups in Egypt, and has entered the Moroccan market in the past years with a total investment of 200 million dollars so far. It currently has seven hotels and is still looking for other investment opportunities in the country, according to Abu Ali and noted that "the kingdom is a fertile land for tourism investment".
29 hotels in Egypt and Morocco
The group has hotel projects under construction in Egypt with a capacity of 4,000 rooms. The total number of its hotels in Egypt and Morocco is currently about 29 hotels, mainly concentrated in the Egyptian tourist areas of Hurghada, Marsa Alam and the north coast, in addition to Marrakech and Agadir, the two most attractive cities for tourists in Morocco.
The revenues of the tourism sector in the Kingdom amounted to about 6 billion dollars in the first seven months of this year, an increase of 3.67% year-on-year and the number of tourists is expected to exceed 15 million tourists by the end of the year, according to the Ministry of Tourism
Abu Ali that his group succeeded last year brought in 1.4 million tourists to Egypt, and total resignation until the end of August of the current year, about one million tourists, thanks to the coastal tourism which specialize in "Picasso" and adopt the same strategy in Morocco.
The kingdom is seeking to attract more investments to the tourism sector in preparation for hosting the cup of the year by the end of the current decade jointly with Spain and Portugal, as the Ministry of tourism provides financial incentives to investors. The sector contributes about 7% of GDP and plays a major role in supporting the kingdom's economy in foreign currencies, which, in addition to tourism, depends on expatriate remittances and exports.
