Tourism leaders assess Vanilla Islands’ successes |16 January 2016

Tourism leaders from Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion and Comoros met in Port Louis earlier this week to assess the successes of their Vanilla Islands regional organisation.

This was their first ministerial meeting of 2016.  

Under the chairmanship of Xavier-Luc Duval, the deputy prime minister of Mauritius, the ministers and heads of tourism from the Indian Ocean islands looked at the statement of the audited accounts of the Vanilla Islands which was presented by Pascal Viroleau, the chief executive of the organisation and supported by Karine Jasmin of the EXA Firm of Auditors, who are the appointed Auditors.

After approving the accounts submitted by Mr Luc Duval, Alain St Ange (the Seychelles Minister for Tourism and Culture), Didier Robert (the President of the Regional Council of Reunion) and Hissane Guy (the President of the Comoros Tourism) discussed the action plan for 2016 presented by Mr Viroleau.

Representatives of the tourism offices present from the different islands of the region were also invited to present their views and also statistics of visitor arrival numbers from the different tourism source markets for the region.

The meeting was also the opportunity for Robert Desvaux, the President of Mauritius Tourism to update the delegates present on the hotel classification programme being undertaken by the island in 2016.

The Vanilla Islands ministerial meeting agreed to pursue the approach of moving forward to make the Indian Ocean the sought-after cruise ship destination.

A decision was also reached to pursue discussions that would see the creation of a low cost airline in order to ensure better air connectivity for the region.

Further discussions on this would be addressed at a next meeting where studies already undertaken would be tabled and analysed.