Seychelles Tourism Minister heads for Air Access and Tourism World Routes

The Seychelles Minister for Tourism & Culture, Alain St.Ange, has confirmed to the press that he will be attending the 19th World Route Development Forum due to take place in Las Vegas, USA, from October 5-8. This conference is set to be the largest Routes event to date and is expected to attract 3,000 high-profile delegates from more than 100 countries worldwide. The conference which is being co-hosted by the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority and Las Vegas McCarran International Airport will be held in the Las Vegas Convention Centre and will mark the first time any Routes event has been held in the USA. The Seychelles Minister will be accompanied by Amy Michel, a Senior Marketing Representative from the Seychelles Tourism Board.

Routes is considered to be the premier global forum for airline route networking which revolves around a series of pre-scheduled, face-to-face meetings, an exhibition (Networking Village), airline opportunity briefings, and a strategy summit. Everything about the 3-day event is designed to get aviation’s thought leaders and decision-makers meeting and talking to discuss the hottest topics facing the industry and to generate new air services, while creating increased tourism demand. The decisions made at World Routes events often have a huge economic impact on a local, national, and international scale, which is why over 100 countries are represented at World Routes.

In a world where competition in route development is on the increase, airlines are looking to gather market information and data on new route opportunities; build and manage relationships; negotiate routes; and agree on marketing support with airports, stakeholders, and tourism authorities. To meet the demand for more collaboration, World Routes 2013 will enable Interline, Alliance and Codeshare managers to meet with other carriers to talk through interline agreements, marketing deals, SPAs, and scheduled connections.

World Routes has consistently provided airports with the opportunity to meet and present their market to the world’s airlines and, as the largest gathering of airlines and network planners, Las Vegas promises to be no exception.

Seychelles hosted what is widely acclaimed as the most successful Routes Africa forum in April 2012 and continues to attend Routes events where routinely someone from the Seychelles’ tourism or aviation industry is given the opportunity to talk about the destination or is represented on one of the discussion panels.

In the upcoming forum in Las Vegas, the Seychelles Tourism Board has been shortlisted for the “Best Destination Marketing Campaign,” award, which Seychelles has won twice consecutively at World Routes 2012 & Routes Africa 2013.

At the forum’s Tourism Strategy Summit on Tuesday, October 8, Minister St.Ange has been selected as a participant in a debate entitled “ICTP Session on New Investment Models” to be moderated by Professor Geoffrey Lipman, President of the International Coalition of Tourism Partners (ICTP) and Director of GreenEarth.travel. He is set to also chair a Minister’s Forum at World Routes 2013.

“The World Routes conference is a joint airline, civil aviation authority, and tourism board tripartite gathering and remains so important for Seychelles, a small country so dependent on tourism, the industry that remains the pillar of the island’s economy,” Minister Alain St.Ange of the Seychelles said.