How the Atlas Lions Success Improves Morocco’s Global Image
The Atlas Lions’ success in the World Cup Qatar 2022 has significantly improved Morocco’s international image, soft power, and awareness. Aside from sports, tourism, business, and culture, there are numerous search terms in Morocco that rank at the top of Google Trends.
The world has praised Morocco’s performance in the Qatar 2022 World Cup, whether in sports, culture, or religion. The latest victory over Portugal has propelled the Hashtag Morocco to the top of the Twitter trends.
The same is true for Google. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, expressed his surprise on Twitter at the scenes of jubilation among Moroccans in Marrakech, where he was staying.
Keywords like Morocco, Marrakech, and Marrakech tourism have increased by 900% in the last three months, as have the names of team members Yassine Bounou, Hakim Ziyech, Mazraoui, and Walid Regragui, reaching tens of millions of monthly searches. These search trends can only benefit the Kingdom if they are translated into economic benefits. What better way to re-energize post-Covid activity than to re-enter one of the most important sectors than tourism! The Moroccan National Tourist Office’s (ONMT) new international brand “Morocco, Land of Light” can only grow in popularity and attractiveness to the international public, particularly among younger generations of travelers.
According to Google Trends, the number of searches for “Morocco” has surpassed that of the United States for the first time. This trend must continue regardless of how the national team performs at the World Cup.
Other Moroccan-related search terms have also increased significantly. We discover that the words “culture,” “business,” “investment,” and “religion” have been searched over a million times. Egypt has been surpassed as the top business search engine by Morocco. This means that previously focused on the Middle East, global investors are beginning to take an interest in Morocco and learn about investment opportunities in the Kingdom.
The same is true for culture and religion, as we can see from the fact that Internet users are eager to learn more about this country, which is having an incredible World Cup run.
The Moroccan national team’s achievement at the world’s largest international soccer tournament cannot be overstated. It is still vital to understand how to capitalize on this achievement in order to leverage it and position Morocco as a leader not only in tourism, but also in other areas as a result of this soft influence in the region and around the world.