Formulation of Morocco’s Digital Tourism Policy: Empirical Evidence from ARDL Bounds Testing

Abstract

Morocco is among the nations positioning tourism as a key driver of economic and social development. The kingdom has historically implemented various tourism policies, with the most notable modern initiatives being the Vision 2010 and Vision 2020 strategies, both aimed at establishing Morocco as a leading global tourist destination. In recent years, the digital transformation of tourism policies has emerged as a critical factor in enhancing destination competitiveness and sustainability. This study investigates the key determinants shaping Morocco’s digital tourism policy through a mixed-methods approach that integrates both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The qualitative analysis, based on policy document examination, explores the perspectives of national policymakers by reviewing government reports and strategic policy frameworks. This approach provides a deeper understanding of the rationale behind national digital tourism policy formulation, the challenges encountered during implementation, and the anticipated impacts on national tourism development. The quantitative component employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds Testing model to analyze both long-term and short-term relationships between digitalization indicators and tourism policy formulation. The analysis is based on a dataset encompassing key macroeconomic and technological variables, including digital infrastructure, online tourism services, and e-governance. The study's findings reveal that variables related to the digital transition, such as digital marketing, online public services, e-government, broadband penetration, and ICT investment, have strong and statistically significant positive effects on tourist arrivals in Morocco. These effects are observed in the short term through improved visibility and accessibility of the destination, and in the long term through the development of structural digital infrastructure and digital governance in the tourism sector. Moreover, the ARDL bounds test results confirm the robustness of the model, the existence of cointegration relationships among the variables, and strong explanatory power, thus providing empirically grounded recommendations to guide Morocco’s future digital tourism policy.