The Impact of COVID-19 on Regional Tourism and Its Statistical Modeling: A Provincial Case Study of Morocco’s Oriental Region (2019–2025)

Tourism is a key driver of development for emerging economies but is vulnerable to shocks. The subnational level remains understudied relative to national or global assessments, despite the 190,000 annual tourist arrivals recorded before the crisis in the five provinces studied here. We describe the change in tourism demand associated with the pandemic period in Morocco’s oriental region using a panel of five provinces (2019–2025, 35 observations) and four models: a log-linear regression, a negative binomial regression, a fixed-effects panel model, and a multivariate PLS2 regression on two jointly modeled responses, arrivals and overnight stays. All four models show a pandemic-phase decline of 41–64% depending on the model; the primary year-by-year specification shows a drop of approximately 55% in 2020 and 33% in 2021, and regional arrivals recovered to about 122% of their 2019 level by 2025. No significant province-level heterogeneity was detected, though test power is limited; accommodation capacity shows the strongest cross-sectional association with demand in the exploratory PLS2 model but is not a within-province determinant; and average length of stay shortened during the crisis. These results point to a pandemic shock of substantial magnitude and a recovery that is quantitative rather than qualitative—consistent with, though not proof of, a largely region-wide shock.