Africa-Press – Seychelles. All tourism establishments and service providers must abide by the standards set by the Tourism department and other agencies in order to provide the right service and keep the Seychelles brand high. If they do not comply, I am afraid their license will not be renewed.”
This was said by the Minister for Foreign Affairs & Tourism, Sylvestre Radegonde, during the annual meeting to review the performance of the Tourism department last year.
“Despite all the challenges, 2022 was a good year in terms of arrival – 332,000 visitors for the year and the revenue is estimated to be around $931 million which is very significant for the country. We recognise that there were and there are many challenges! We do not have enough activities to encourage our visitors to spend their money and our focus this year should be finding ways on how to make the stay of our visitors more enjoyable,” said Minister Radegonde.
His focus was also on how each one should take their responsibility and provide the best service to all visitors.
“Unfortunately in our visits we found some challenges and we recommended to the owners to make some adjustments in order to be relevant with the standard. If they do not abide, we will have to take drastic actions and after review, their licenses might not be renewed,” warned the minister.
He also commended the efforts of many who keep the industry running and helping the brand Seychelles to fly high.
Plan for the next three years
Principal secretary for Tourism, Sherin Francis, explained that for the next three years, the tourism department’s vision is set to make this sector a higher performing and inclusive one with greater inter-sectoral linkages and our mission has been set to provide one of the main engines of domestic wealth creation.
“We will be looking at three main things – the demand, the product and our talents. And this would be through our 3 main priority areas: Grow the demand for higher value and lower impact tourism; Product enhancement, diversification and differentiation and Facilitate the delivery of a high-performing tourism workforce.”
With these strategies, the tourism department would like to achieve the strategic results such as: Grow the demand for the destination, while reducing reliance on Europe, enhancing growth across key market segments and maintain an industry-leading satisfaction rating; Offer more cultural, community based and eco-tourism products, improve risk management, safety and security situation and Establish a framework to continuously develop and support the tourism workforce in the consistent delivery of a first-class service.
Plan in terms of revenue…
The first focus in terms of objectives is the revenue. PS Francis shared that the target for 2026 is an average spending per visitor of US $3,231.00 which would come to a total of US $1,237.47 billion. For 2023 they are aiming to hit the US $1 billion mark and that will translate to US $3,081 for this year by each visitor or an average spend of US $300 per visitor per day. This means the tourism industry will have to entice our visitors – each of them – to spend at least US $275 more for their visits in Seychelles.
“With all the challenges we are faced with for 2023, it would be an achievement if we can at least maintain the 2022 visitor arrival figures. This is why we have maintained it at 330,000 visitors only. Economic recession has hit the whole of Europe some more than others; inflation has been at an all-time highest ever recorded. Many countries have had to re-structure sovereign debts. The irrational travel behaviors in 2022 is expected to normalize this year and household savings are going back to a normal level, unused vouchers have been redeemed and people in general are becoming more concerned over the lingering effects of the economic troubles.”
PS Francis also spoke about airfares prices of Seychelles, against our competitors in the region where our prices from any of our source markets are among the highest which makes us very uncompetitive.
“We noticed that the average daily rates of rooms especially among the larger properties, the gaps between us and our competitors keep increasing as well. Supported by aggressive marketing drive by these same competitors, this forms part of our pessimism for 2023. Therefore, maintaining our 2022 performance will be an achievement.”
Bernadette Willemin, director general for destination marketing, added this meeting is an important one with all the stakeholders as “we have to see how collectively we can reach our objectives. Each Seychellois has a role to play in making tourism successful. We have to make sure that when each visitor comes, he has to bring back Seychelles with him…this is the marketing we are targeting. It is a fact that our country had the advantage compared to other destinations as we were prepared and ready to welcome tourists. We surpassed our target and this is a done deal. Now we have to see how to move forward as other competitors have also become aggressive. Challenges will be always here and our advantage is that Seychelles is a well-known brand. If we work together we will make it.”
To conclude, from an optimist side Seychelles remains an aspirational brand and still appeals to the travel segment that would still travel despite rise in travel prices and or recessions provided they get value for money. Right now as we speak we are eating up the market share of our competitors in online travel searches as we run a series of mega digital campaigns with brands such as BBC, Nat Geo, Euronews among others.
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