Indian Ocean Vanilla Islands meeting in Comoros

The grouping of the Indian Ocean Vanilla Islands (Comoros, La Reunion, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte and the Seychelles) have been meeting this week in Moroni in the Comoros.

The Tourism Authority or Tourism Boards representatives of five of the seven Vanilla Islands were meeting under the chairmanship of the Seychelles Minister Alain St.Ange, who is also the sitting President of the Indian Ocean Vanilla islands Organisation.

Pascal Viroleau, the CEO of the Vanilla Islands was also present to present the achievements of the Organisation and to answer questions from representatives from the Member States on the budget in hand.

Promotional activities and actions for 2014 was also tabled and discussed.

Visibility of the Organisation to ensure that the name ‘Indian Ocean Vanilla Islands’ becomes more relevant in the world of tourism was a topic that was also tabled and extensively debated. The meeting also decided on the need for the Vanilla islands Organisation to publish their own joint brochures, coffee table books and to produce a promotional film for all the seven islands together.

The Comoros meeting was also seen as a positive event to get representatives of Member States to get to know each other’s strong selling points and tourism attractions.

Minister Alain St.Ange said that he was personally happy to have had the chance to get to know the Comoros and to have had good and frank one to one meetings with the Comoros Minister for Tourism.

The next Indian Ocean Vanilla Islands Ministers Meeting is to be held in Seychelles during the last week of the month of April 2014.