Seychelles delegation heads to India

Two of the Seychelles Tourism Board Marketing Executives have left Seychelles for India accompanied by a number of tourism trade partners to participate in the Outbound Travel Market (OTM) Tourism Trade Fair.

Seychelles has seen a steady increase in visitor arrival numbers from India, and the tourism trade wanting to help develop that potential market has rallied to make it possible for Seychelles to be present at the Indian Tourism Trade Fair.

Alain St.Ange, the CEO of the Seychelles Tourism Board, recently met with the Mr. Thanglura Darlong, the Indian High Commissioner in Seychelles, to discuss cooperation with India in a bid to increase visitor arrival numbers from that potential market. One area discussed was to work to gain access into Bollywood to encourage them to look at Seychelles for film shooting locations.

“Seychelles is realistic that it needs to diversify its tourism market base. Europe, the traditional market, is today being seriously affected because of their own economic difficulties coupled with the drop in value of the Euro, at the same time as Air Seychelles dropped its service from all its European destinations. A sold bed is a bed sold, and this should be taken as the positive way forward as we welcome visitors from new destinations at the same time, as we all continue to work to find solutions to regain our market share from Europe. It is an adaptation process that some will find hard to accept, because we were so comfortable with our traditional markets, but reality today dictates the need to adapt and to be proactive,” Alain St.Ange said as he saw off the Seychelles delegation leaving for the India Tourism Trade Fair, OTM.

This year, Seychelles has been able to compensate the losses in visitor arrival numbers from Europe because of the increase in arrivals from China, Russia, India, and now Hungary. “The arrival on Transaero flight from Russia, the Ethiopian Airline flight from China, the Safari Travel flight from Hungary, and the regular groups now arriving week after week from China, shows clearly the new possibilities that exists for our islands. Everyone landing from these new planes are holiday makers booking hotel rooms in Seychelles, and they are helping consolidate our country’s economy,” Alain St.Ange said as he thanked the private sector delegation for being proactive and working alongside the Tourism Board to help diversify its market base.