Morocco closed 2025 with a record 19.8 million tourists (+14%), and 2026 is running ahead — 7.7 million international visitors in January–May. Casablanca, the country's business and air hub, absorbs the corporate share of a surge now aimed at 26 million tourists by 2030.
Every fourth visitor to Morocco touches Casablanca: Mohammed V handles 31% of national air traffic, and its 2025 record of 11.5 million passengers (+9.3%) was powered by the same engines as the national tourism record — AFCON 2025, which filled the city's hotels through December and January, expanded Royal Air Maroc frequencies, and record European demand.
Europe remains the source market with nearly 16.5 million air passengers to Morocco (+9.3%), but growth is broadening: South America +34.2%, North America +14.5% to 581,297, African routes +13.7%.
Casablanca's base load is corporate — finance, industry, the port — but the leisure share is climbing as the hotel stock upgrades and the Art Deco district is restored. The city is also the de facto congress capital: AFCON delegations, World Cup preparation traffic and a growing events calendar keep weekday occupancy high year-round.
The 2030 target of 26 million tourists implies sustained double-digit infrastructure growth — the airport terminal, Casablanca Sud station and the RER are sized for exactly this curve.
Casablanca's arrivals are the most diversified in Morocco: business travel, diaspora VFR, congresses and now a growing leisure slice — a portfolio that smooths seasonality in a way resort cities cannot. For the traveller: the practical effect is year-round midweek rate pressure but weekend deals at business hotels — flip the usual leisure logic, and pair a Casablanca arrival with Rabat or El Jadida by train rather than treating the city as a one-night stopover. For the watcher: the AFCON-to-World-Cup sequence is a five-year demand guarantee; the question is absorption — watch hotel pipeline delivery against the 2029–30 event spike, and whether Royal Air Maroc's expansion keeps Casablanca the transfer hub or leaks traffic to Marrakech's leisure point-to-point growth.
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