The Arab City and International Tourism

The position of the Arab region, a sunny geographic area with rich and diverse cultures close to the first sending zone for world tourism which is Europe, made some of its countries like Morocco, Tunisia or Egypt play a pioneering role as southern tourist destinations. Nevertheless and despite this geographical closeness, the Arab world today receives only about 6.1% of the tourist flows recorded at global level. However, these tourist arrivals are constantly increasing (21 million arrivals in 1995, and 76 million in 2016). This tourist activity has developed in most of these countries in close connection with the city where tourism takes over the city centers and spreads in certain parts of the urban fabric. This development has resulted today in the unprecedented situation illustrated by the historic centers of Moroccan cities, where former tourists settle in second homes which they transform into accommodation structures. The paper aims to analyze this phenomenon while situating it within the broader changes observed all over the world regarding tourism in the post-Fordist era, but which, in Arab cities, takes on quite specific aspects.