Easter Holiday Revives Tourism Sector in Marrakesh

Marrakesh city. (Getty Images)
Marrakesh city. (Getty Images)
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Easter Holiday Revives Tourism Sector in Marrakesh

Marrakesh city. (Getty Images)
Marrakesh city. (Getty Images)

The percentage of reserved hotels in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh reached 83 percent during April, compared to 76 percent for the same month in 2018, according to statistics from the Morocco’s Tourism Observatory.

Hotel reservations in Marrakesh amounted to 894,000, an increase of seven percent compared to April 2017, representing 35.3 percent of the total reserved hotel rooms in Morocco during this period.

During the first four months of 2019, some 2.8 million tourists visited in Marrakesh.

The Observatory said the average stay for each tourist in the city was three nights.

Tens of thousands of Moroccan Jews throughout the world have chosen Marrakesh as their top destination during the Easter holidays a tourist source told Asharq Al-Awsat, noting that this has caused a boom in the city’s tourism sector.

He said Moroccan Jewish community had fully booked 15 hotels in Marrakesh on this occasion.

The source pointed out that Jewish visitors stayed at the city’s hotels for ten days. They visited a number of Jewish attractions, most notably the Chaim Pinto Synagogue in the city of Essaouira (west of Marrakesh), the David Oumushi Synagogue (south of Marrakesh) and Tomb of Rabbi Shlomo Bel Hensh in Ourika on the outskirts of Marrakesh.

Interior Ministry’s statistics revealed that Marrakesh airport received 44.3 percent of the total airport arrivals in Morocco and 37 percent of all tourists crossing the borders through all land, sea and air ports in April.

For the fourth consecutive year, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) has ranked Marrakesh as the best tourist destination in Africa. The TripAdvisor company has also named it as the world’s ninth most beautiful tourist city.



Trump Taps Scott Bessent for Treasury

(FILES) Scott Bessent, head of Key Square Group and former chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, attends the second day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 12, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho.(Photo by Drew ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
(FILES) Scott Bessent, head of Key Square Group and former chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, attends the second day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 12, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho.(Photo by Drew ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
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Trump Taps Scott Bessent for Treasury

(FILES) Scott Bessent, head of Key Square Group and former chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, attends the second day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 12, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho.(Photo by Drew ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
(FILES) Scott Bessent, head of Key Square Group and former chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, attends the second day of the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference, July 12, 2017 in Sun Valley, Idaho.(Photo by Drew ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he will nominate prominent investor Scott Bessent as US Treasury secretary, a key cabinet position with vast influence over economic, regulatory and international affairs.

"I am most pleased to nominate Scott Bessent to serve as the 79th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States," Trump said in a statement released on Truth Social. "Scott is widely respected as one of the world's foremost international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists."

Wall Street has been closely watching who Trump will pick, especially given his plans to remake global trade through tariffs and extend and potentially expand the raft of tax cuts enacted during his first term, Reuters reported
The choice came after days of deliberations by Trump as he sorted through a shifting list of candidates. Bessent spent day after day at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida providing economic advice, sources said, a proximity to the president-elect that may have helped him prevail.
Other names that had been floated included Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Marc Rowan and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh. Investor John Paulson had also been a leading candidate, but dropped out, while Wall Street veteran Howard Lutnick, another contender, was appointed as head of the Commerce Department.
Bessent, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has advocated for tax reform and deregulation, particularly to spur more bank lending and energy production, as noted in a recent opinion piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.
The market's surge after Trump's election victory, he wrote, signaled investor expectations of "higher growth, lower volatility and inflation, and a revitalized economy for all Americans."
"Bessent has been on the side of less aggressive tariffs," said Oxford Economics' Ryan Sweet, adding that picking him makes the steep tariffs Trump proposed on the campaign trail less likely.
Bessent follows other financial luminaries who have taken the job, including former Goldman Sachs executives Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson and Steven Mnuchin, Trump's first Treasury chief. Janet Yellen, the current secretary and first woman in the job, previously chaired the Federal Reserve and White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, Bessent's home state, said in a statement: "President Trump's economic agenda is in good hands with Scott Bessent. I look forward to working closely with Scott and President Trump to lower inflation and create the golden age of prosperity for the American people."