JEDDAH: Thirty thousand Moroccans are coming to perform the upcoming Haj, according to new Moroccan Consul General Abdelali Jai. “The number has remained the same over the last few years,” he told Arab News on the sidelines of a three-day Moroccan food festival which he opened at the Trident Hotel here on Tuesday.
“As many as 172,000 applications were received from the Moroccans for this year’s Haj, but we had to stick to our quota,” Mohammed Salem Ammagui, general manager of Royal Air Maroc (RAM) for Saudi Arabia and Yemen, said. An official delegation comprising ministers and other important dignitaries will be arriving for the annual pilgrimage. Several thousand Moroccans have also been coming to perform Umrah every year.
RAM, which operates weekly four flights from Jeddah and three others from Riyadh to Casablanca, will be transporting the pilgrims on six of its special Haj flights. The airline plans to introduce a fifth flight from Jeddah from April, he added. Saudi families have been increasingly vacationing in Morocco’s various tourist places. “In fact, we have been targeting countries especially in the Arab world, Africa and Europe for promoting our tourism,” Ammagui said, adding that the country has been getting up to 7.5 million tourists annually, 45 percent of them from France alone.
“We hope to increase this number to 10 million by 2010,” he said. The country accounts for a revenue of $5 billion a year from tourism.
Ammagui said about 10,000 Moroccan nationals are residing across Saudi Arabia and a million Moroccans are living in France.
Trident Hotel General Manager Chander Nain said the hotel was hosting the Moroccan festival for the second year in succession. “This is because Moroccan cuisine is quite popular here,” he said. Oberoi Hotels, which manages the Jeddah property, is considering plans to open three hotels in Morocco including one in Marrakech, he added. Three Moroccan chefs provided authentic cuisine with the traditional ambience during the festival that ended yesterday.
