Marrakesh in two minds over tourism boom

By Tom Pfeiffer

MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - With its snake charmers, storytellers and palm trees against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains, Marrakesh was once an offbeat destination for rich or adventurous Europeans.

Now hotels, holiday homes and golf courses are transforming the ancient city into a mass tourism destination, leaving some residents fearing the development may be too much, too fast.

"Tourism brings only illnesses and social deviance," said one young man in a recent survey of local attitudes.

"You're wrong," interrupted his mother. "It is thanks to these people that we have bread to eat."

The government wants to double the number of tourists to Morocco to 10 million per year by 2010. Last year it approved investment projects around Marrakesh worth over $2 billion.

The aim is to divert some of Europe's wealth and narrow a glaring wealth gap.

Marrakesh may be only an hour by plane from Spain's Costa del Sol but it lies in a country that last year ranked 123rd out of 177 in the U.N. Human Development Index, which measures such factors as child mortality and health care.

The city's population has doubled in two decades as droughts led to a gradual exodus from the surrounding countryside.

Tourists are drawn to the old medina's narrow streets where mules and scooters jostle just yards from the trickling fountains of shaded traditional riad courtyard homes.

But veiled women sit begging near marble-clad riad hotels that cost up to 3,000 dirhams ($350) per night. Security guards are posted at the doors of new shopping malls.

Foreigners have bought and restored more than 1,000 riads in the medina, creating much-needed work for local craftsmen but also forcing house prices up five-fold in 10 years.

Some tourists flout travel advice and dress scantily, or sunbathe on their hotel terraces, shocking the local women hanging out their washing.

Aging European men can be seen socializing with young Moroccan women in the city's night clubs, stirring suspicions that sex tourism is growing.

Europeans complain of being hassled to buy gifts -- without realizing competition is fierce. One purchase could feed a shopkeeper's family for days.

RESPECT