Megan and Harry take MBE to tour operator

This is sustainable tourism with a travel industry big brave heart or two

The McHugo brothers, Mike and Chris have been around the travel industry for a while and they’ve both clearly got big hearts.

Mike fell in love with Morocco in 1972 whilst he was craving adventure and driven there in a second hand Beetle. He set up a company called Hobo Travel, filled a couple of Land Rovers with UK travellers by advertising in Private Eye magazine, and drove them around Morocco on a regular basis.

In 1978 he found himself in Imlil valley looking for trekking routes. It was extremely basic with no road, and no electricity for another 20 years; a trail-head village to Jbel Toubkal peak overseen by the Kasbah, originally the summer home palace of a local caïd (baron), left to rack and ruin when Morocco gained independence from France in 1956.

In 1989, their father died and Mike and Chris took their mother to Imlil, as guests of local mountain guide and respected community leader, Omar Ait Barmed (later known as Hajj Maurice after pilgrimage to Mecca), with whom Mike worked and had become firm friends. Looming over the village was the Kasbah’s ruins.

Chris had seen in the Financial Times that the king, Hassan II, had decided to make investment in Morocco easier, especially in tourism. We knew someone would buy the Kasbah, and might turn it into an incongruent hotel, so we thought we should try – especially with his French business and Morocco community interests, to put the Kasbah into safe hands.

Before the Kasbah opened, there really wasn’t much work in the villages, just some small scale seasonal trekking tourism. Men would have a winter exodus to go to the desert, to Marrakech, Agadir, Casablanca or further afield to find work, leaving families out of necessity for income.

And it’s not just the Kasbah employing the people now, it’s also the guides, the muleteers and the shops that the Kasbah and the visitors buy from – it’s all money for the villages and for the Village Association to support the community further. It makes a big difference to lives.

The purchase process took 6 years. Before a stone was laid they created a Vision document of the objectives for the Kasbah, namely

• to be a flagship development for sustainable tourism in a fragile mountain environment: to be a viable business, enhancing the life and vitality of the local community;

• to be a centre of excellence for academic work for the High Berbers; to educate guests on the local culture to facilitate a change in attitude; in which stakeholders would be proud.

In March 1995, work began on rebuilding, with the first phase complete by the end of the year. Village labourers used traditional building techniques and local materials for construction, with everything carried in by hand or on the backs of mules.

Building continued as time, money and ideas allowed, with the limitation of no electricity for 18 years until 1997! That was the year we also formed the Association des Bassins d’Imlil (ABI), the Village Association.

As Discover Ltd was already an established business in the school education market and our mainstay, the next phase was to make the Kasbah building more useful for that purpose. Discover hosted a trip for members of the Young Presidents’ Organisation in 1998 which confirmed the exceptional experience of the Kasbah hospitality, reconfirmed by being Highly Commended for sustainable tourism by the Green Globe Awards the same year.

Further awards followed:  in 2002, a Tourism for Tomorrow award for the built environment; in 2004, the Responsible Travel Award for the mountain environment; in 2005, the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism Award for Sustainable Tourism; and in 2012 the Conde Nast Johanseen Award for outstanding excellence.

John Wood, the founder of Room To Read(a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting education), stayed at Kasbah du Toubkal in 2004 and met Mike..

Room To Read’s mission is to provide under-a belief that if you educate a girl you potentially educate a future generation as well. The brothers were hugely impressed with his achievements and it was obvious there was a considerable need for better education especially for girls in Morocco.

A group of friends, many living and working in Morocco, used to occasionally get together to have a meal. It was suggested that perhaps these occasional meetings could be formalised into a monthly dining club that would raise money for this cause.

Since the beginning, many people have given their time and energy to help us get this far and raise the funds to get the first boarding houses started. We are grateful to everyone who has played a role in keeping EFA growing, with financial resources and time.

And as they gained reputation and more guests, so more money was paid as a levy for the community; The Education for All (EFA)   charity was established to share this with the ABI Village Association in 2006. EFA’s first boarding house opened in 2009, the second in 2010, the third in 2011 – as well as a rubbish truck for ABI – the fourth in 2012 and the fifth in 2014.

With Mike being a keen cyclist, in 2013, they created the inaugural Marrakech Atlas Etape, for the benefit of Education For All, a (now annual) cyclosportive starting from Marrakech up to the ski-resort high in the Atlas Mountains and back down again which challenges  serious amateurs or professionals.

And the brothers had the very proud moment when the first 6 EFA scholars passed their baccalaureates to go on to further education.

EFA’s first project opened in 2007, giving access to secondary education for up to 36 girls. It was challenging to convince parents to send their daughters to the schools, but after only a few years they needed to expand to meet the demand for places!

In September 2009, they opened a second boarding house in an even more remote area of the High Atlas 100 km from Marrakech in the town of Talaat n’Yacoub. This increased intake to 36 more girls and in 2010 they built a new one in Ouirgane.

Since then 2 more houses have opened, including a recent one in Asni in 2016, bringing the total to 5. The most recent one is the biggest with a capacity of 48 girls, taking our total to 185 in 2017.

SEE THE VIDEO HERE

And then Meghan and Harry popped up to personally give Mike an MBE.

All through big hearts, a thirst for adventure and the travel industry.

Valere Tjolle