As many as 3.5 million tourists have visited Morocco during the first semester of 2009, registering a 9 percent increase compared to last year's same period, the Moroccan Tourism Department announced.

Europeans made up the majority of Morocco's visitors. While the French were the largest in number (1.37 million), the Dutch registered the highest increase, up 15 percent than last year, the tourism watchdog's statistics released on Thursday revealed.

The increase in arrivals, however, was not reflected in hotel and resort bookings, which plummeted by 7 percent during the first months of this year, before slightly increasing towards the end of the first semester, the department said.

According to the same report, travel revenues during the first semester reached 20.9 billion dirhams (2.6 billion U.S. dollars), dropping by 14.4 percent compared with the same period of last year, which registered 24.4 billion dirhams.(1 U.S.dollar = 8.07 dirhams).

(Xinhua News Agency August 7, 2009)