Smart Tourism Destinations and Vision 2030: What Digital Roadmap for Morocco's Imperial Cities?

Abstract

Moroccan tourism is going through a singular historical sequence: after a record year in 2025, with nearly twenty million international arrivals, the trajectory toward the target of twenty-six million tourists by 2030 appears quantitatively credible, yet remains qualitatively fragile. The concentration of flows in a few urban hubs exposes the imperial cities (Fez, Marrakech, Meknes and Rabat) to pressures on capacity, experience quality and heritage sustainability. This article, theoretical and documentary in nature, examines the potential contribution of the smart tourism destination paradigm to resolving this tension. It addresses a specific scientific gap: the absence, in the existing literature, of an articulation between international research on smart destinations and the Moroccan institutional framework applied to the imperial cities. Drawing on a critical reading of the literature and a documentary analysis of the national strategic framework (the 2023-2026 tourism roadmap, the Digital Morocco 2030 strategy, and Law 09-08), it proposes a digital roadmap structured around four interdependent workstreams: collaborative governance of territorial data, destination digital infrastructure, personalization of the visitor experience, and human capital development, with institutional and algorithmic trust as the cross-cutting condition. The argument proceeds in four stages: conceptual framework, strategic diagnosis, operational roadmap, and critical discussion of the risks of techno-solutionism.

JEL Classification: Z32; O33; L83; H83.

Paper type: Theoretical Research