Seychelles Tourist Board launches tourism ambassadors

The Seychelles Tourist Board (STB) has launched a novel approach last week towards added representation in many of the key cities visitors usually come from, when announcing the appointment of Seychelles “tourism ambassadors” across many parts of the world.

Significantly for this correspondent was that Ms. Pearl Hoareau, the managing director of the Uganda Travel Bureau, got appointed as “tourism envoy’ for Uganda, while Mrs. Popsy de Souza–Gitonga received her appointment for Kenya, being based in Nairobi. Some of the other twelve cities where the newly-appointed ambassadors of tourism reside are Cape Town, La Reunion, Paris, Munich, Salzburg, Geneva, Montreux, Brighton, Stockholm, Prague, and Moscow. More appointments are reportedly in the making and will be announced soon.

The initiative was launched at the start of the country’s tourism marketing conference, which saw Seychellois President James Michael open the main event in the presence of the tourism and business community, members of government, the public service, and the international media.

The main objective for these Seychellois appointees is to establish closer ties with the media, the travel trade, and airlines in their resident countries or cities in which they live, in order to generate more visits to the islands, including attracting other Seychellois to come home more often.

It is clear that challenging times need often novel solutions and this certainly is a step to make the Seychelles more visible abroad and generate added interest in holidays to the archipelago.