Seychelles tourism begins New Year by reconnecting with big hotels

Seychelles Minister of Tourism and Culture Alain St.Ange announced the start of a series of meetings with hoteliers and general managers of all tourism establishments.

Seychelles Minister of Tourism and Culture Alain St.Ange announced the start of a series of meetings with hoteliers and general managers of all tourism establishments. This aim of this mission is to remain connected and to continue to work together in finding ways of alleviating the constraints and challenges their business are faced with.

General managers of big hotels in Seychelles have put forward the challenges that their establishments face as well as suggestions which can help better the industry. This was during a meeting held recently with the Minister for Tourism and Culture, Alain St.Ange, at his ESPACE Building offices. Also present at the meeting was the Principal Secretary for Tourism, Anne Lafortune.

The issues raised were mostly related to labor, as they all pointed out that there is a need to look at what can be done to reduce the level of staff turnover at these hotels. Other issues put to the attention of Minister St.Ange and Mrs. Lafortune were the quota system and the Seychellois workforce in these hotels.

Discussions also centered on the need to ease the process of promoting expatriates. The heads of these big hotels said there are cases when these foreigners have excelled in their jobs, and when they qualify to be promoted, there are many challenges which disallows them to be.

They added that as a result, either another foreigner is brought in to take the post and this, they find is unfair as the new person does not know the country and takes months to adjust in the new working environment. Another point which was brought forward during the meeting was in relation to taxis. Hotels are still facing quite a number of difficulties in regards to taxis. These include either the taxi meters which still need to be installed, high rates being charged by the drivers and their dress code. The ongoing question of car hire companies operating as taxi operators was also brought up by PS Anne Lafortune. On this subject, Minister St.Ange said that the buck must stop at the hotel GM, and he added that breaking the country’s laws and regulations is just not acceptable, and the GM will be held personally responsible if practices that are deemed illegal persists.

Minister St.Ange said this meeting has been an important step taken at the beginning of a new year and such consultations will help to better not only the general operations and services of these hotels, but the industry as a whole will benefit.

The next meeting with this group of general managers is scheduled to be held in another three months, but a hoteliers meeting with a group of some twenty small hotel owners will be held on Praslin Island next week again with the mission of remaining connected with the private sector trade.

Seychelles is a founding member of the International Coalition of Tourism Partners (ICTP) . For more information on Seychelles Minister of Tourism and Culture Alain St.Ange, click here.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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