Fregate Island Private: self-sufficient in vegetables and more |08 January 2014

Eco-tourism and self sufficiency or sustainable tourism are today buzz words in the tourism industry, but seeing it all in practice remains impressive.

The private granitic island of Fregate, one of the upmarket luxury one island, one hotel resort complexes prides itself on being able to follow a vision that blends tourism, the environment and what is call sustainable approach to tourism.

A vegetable garden, a fruit farm, fishing for guest as and when required and more keeps the restaurants of the island supplied with the freshest of products. The management and staff of the island all believe in the approach of self-sufficiency and all talk proudly about it among themselves and to visitors to the island.

Fregate Island is but 12 minutes by helicopter from the main island of Mahé and all the needed produce for the hotel could easily be brought in especially with the armada of fast boats anchored in the island's marina. But the island's management decided to follow the path they call sustainable tourism and develop an intensively-farmed organic garden of local and other tropical fruit.

Tourists coming to the island are all impressed when they go through the rows of papaya trees laden with fruit or through a banana plantation.

The vegetable garden in the plateau of the island is permanently being attended to as are the fruit trees seen on the hillside as one drives to the island's Rock Spa or to the villas.

Fregate Island is doing today what more islands resorts and other tourism establishments should be doing. Seychelles launched its own sustainable tourism label and has been advocating this as the way forward for these mid-ocean islands that remain dependent on tourism, the industry that remains the pillar of the island's economy.

Contributed