The Future Leaders Challenge Morocco 2026 (FLC), held on March 30-31, brought together students, academic institutions, industry leaders, and public officials around a shared mission: transforming Morocco’s tourism sector through the energy and ideas of its youth. The event concluded with the announcement of its top three finalists, with Al Akhawayn University taking first place, followed by the Higher School of Technology of Essaouira, and the International University of Casablanca VATEL.
This year’s edition featured 12 Moroccan schools whose students spent three months working on real strategic challenges defined by a committee including Imad Barrakad, Director General of the Moroccan Society for Tourism Engineering (SMIT), and Hamid Bentahar, President of the National Tourism Confederation (CNT). Their proposals addressed priorities directly aligned with Morocco’s Tourism Roadmap 2023–2026: digital innovation, sustainability, inclusion, cultural valorisation, and community engagement.
Tourism Minister Fatim-Zahra Ammor highlighted the government’s commitment to nurturing this generation, noting that young people who know their regions and propose solutions with real impact are exactly the talent Morocco needs. She recalled the sector’s impressive trajectory: nearly 20 million tourists welcomed in 2025, 138 billion dirhams in foreign currency receipts, and 92,000 jobs created in three years.
Beyond the competition itself, the FLC is increasingly shaping the pipeline of tourism professionals. Organisers noted a measurable increase in students opting for hospitality and tourism programmes, and described the platform as a movement where education and industry now collaborate in a sustainable, structured way rather than operating in parallel.
After three years of building the FLC Morocco platform, its organizers say the first structural results are now visible. What began as an ambition to bring young people closer to the hospitality sector has evolved into an ecosystem where universities, businesses, and public institutions co-create solutions to the industry’s most pressing challenges — with a growing number of student projects finding their way into actual tourism development strategies.
