The southern Moroccan coastline is populated with hundreds of tiny fishing villages, perched on the very edge of the Atlantic and looking out at the world across its vast expanse. When I first found myself in one of these villages, back in 2021, it felt like I was at the end of the earth, in an inaccessible gem tucked far away from the tourist hotspots of Marrakech and Agadir.
In 2019, 13.11 million tourists visited Morocco. In 2020, the number plummeted to 2.80 million–as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic–and any hopes of a rebound in 2021 were disappointed with only 3.72 million that year.
The few tourists that did make it, which I was one of, were a cause for relief amongst the hardest-hit hostels and makeshift restaurants along the southern coastline that have long been dependent on the international travelers that flock to the region in search of winter sun and glassy waves.
But in the years since, numbers of visitors have increased rapidly, and the radical change that an explosion in tourism has had on these areas has been daunting on locals.
Surf tourism, in particular, has driven this rise, transforming off-the-beaten-track destinations into international hubs for any village lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on who you ask) to be close to a world-class wave.
Pictures provided by Elle Benson Easton
Imsouane is one of the best examples of this mixed legacy. The village is home to one of the longest waves in the country, a wave that is not uncommonly referred to as the “perfect longboard wave,” drawing an estimated 100,000 visitors every year to the small fishing village.
Hafidi was one of the first locals to pick up a board, encouraged by the few European surfers that would drive down the Moroccan coast in search of waves many decades ago. At the time, there was no surf industry to speak of. Anyone who did manage to make the long and difficult trip into the village would rent a room from a local family, or make-do by camping.
Hafidi was one of the first to see the economic opportunity that surfing presented. He began to teach on a casual basis, slowly building up enough savings to eventually buy land and open a surf camp of his own. He now has locations in both Imsouane and nearby Tamraght.
When we met in 2023, he was considering selling the business and moving out of the village he grew up in, conscious of how much it was changing.
Mohamed Lebsat, a surf photographer in Taghazout based a few hours south of Imsouane, explains the two legacies of the tourism industry plainly. “Many hotels and surf camps have created job opportunities like surf instructors, drivers, photographers like me, kitchen staff, and hosts—many people now move to Taghazout to work from other cities,” he said.
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“But,” he continues, “the bad side, which I don’t like myself, is that everything has become expensive—food, rent—locals can’t get a nice apartment for a decent price anymore.” Almost everyone is caught in the same conflict.
And yet the surf industry, especially in the Taghazout area, is “lit” so to say. The last season, the winter of 2023-2024, was widely regarded as one of the best yet. Expectations for the coming season are high; more and more tourists and workers will continue rolling in.
But in early 2024, however, the global surf community got a visceral look at the darker side of surf tourism when bulldozers rolled into Imsouane and destroyed much of the old town, giving just 24 hours of notice. That destruction ended the careers of many locals who ran restaurants or other small businesses in the region.
Six months later, there’s still no real understanding of what happened. Some accept that the buildings were, in fact, illegal or missing papers, but complained that no attempt was made to sort licenses out although any of these buildings had stood decades uninterrupted.
It wasn’t the first instance: just a month earlier, a village nearby, Tifnit, faced a similar destruction, leading to suspicion that space was being cleared for resort development. Both towns were made famous by surfing, and now seemed to be suffering the consequences of having gained the world’s attention.
No matter what, tourism in this region isn’t going away. And many argue it shouldn’t; it’s long been a lifeline for many, allowing for the proliferation of small businesses and an influx of foreign cash, especially in the poorer, less industrial regions of the country.
Yassine, based in Sidi Kaouki, began surfing at just eight years old. At 26, he opened a surf school in his town with his twin brother in 2017. Growing up, he tells me, the difficulty with getting a chance to surf was “always about equipment: growing up in a village, or in a poor family, you can’t afford it.”
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Much like Haifidi, he and his brother began building the business slowly, gradually buying wetsuits and boards to offer to tourists. As tourism grew, so did his business. The twins make sure that they do a lot of charity work with local people, ensuring that they have access to surfing as much as anyone coming from outside the small city’s walls. “The village is changing, but you need to follow this change; it’s a good thing. Yeah, there are some bad things, but it’s about balance,” he explains.
More tourism, he points out, means more businesses, which means more opportunities. “You just have to be motivated to do something, you know?”
Many are motivated to make that jump into the tourism industry, and it’s not just limited to surfing. As tourism infrastructure grows, more people are visiting for other reasons too, especially those who wouldn’t have spent weeks in a tent just for a good wave. The difficulty is making sure that growth in tourism can be managed sustainably.
Land will play a big part in this. From generational homes being destroyed with little notice to the rapid increase in land prices, it’s quickly becoming a flashpoint. There’s a sense amongst some that a few locals got very lucky with their timing, buying when land was still cheap and building their business as the tourism industry grew. Some plots are now worth well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It might still be possible for locals to start up small but they’re increasingly competing against people from richer parts of the country, internationals, or even big businesses, all of whom have significantly higher purchasing power. It’s increasingly rare to see young Moroccans from these areas opening hostels as land prices have spiraled out of reach. Instead, there’s a growing risk that locals begin to bear the brunt of the negative impacts (high rents, seasonal work, increased food and transport costs) without reaping any of the benefits.
Morocco isn’t alone in being impacted by these trends; perhaps it could look to responses from other locations to tackle the difficulties. In Mexico, for instance, there are restrictions on how close to the ocean foreigners are allowed to buy. Maybe this could inspire Moroccan officials, who knows? Either way, finding a solution will be a serious challenge, but two things can be true at the same time: tourism has brought innumerable opportunities, and tourism has unilaterally impacted many of these local communities as well. And for those who still chose to visit these slices of paradise, just make sure to carefully consider how you chose to do so.
Lead picture provided by Elle Benson Easton
