Tourism Festival set for September 16-23 |18 August 2018

This year’s Tourism Festival will be held between September 16-23, the organising committee chaired by the Minister for Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports and Marine Didier Dogley has agreed.

Initially planned for the last week of September to accommodate the World Tourism Day which is celebrated by the world on September 27, the event, under the theme ‘We are Tourism’ has now been pulled back to avoid a clash with the TOP RESA International Tourism and Travel Exhibition in France.

The event is normally attended by most local partners involved in organising the Tourism Week.

In their second meeting held recently at the Botanical House, the committee made up of members involved in the tourism industry, both in the public and private sectors, agreed on the change of date and also on the calendar of event for this year’s Tourism Week.

It is the Savoy Seychelles Resort and Spa at Beau Vallon which will host the official launch of the event on Sunday September 16.

This year’s festival will feature a range of activities which will be hosted by all the parties involved, namely the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB), the Seychelles Hospitality and Tourism Association (SHTA), the Seychelles Tourism Academy (STA), Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) and  the Department of Tourism among others.

Other than the annual traditional Tourism Ball, along with the visitors welcoming activity at the International Airport, this year’s event will see new activities for all ages.

Among the proposed activities is a drone photography competition, a food fiesta which will take place on all three main islands, a tourism mass and training for stakeholders in the tourism industry.

As for the STA, it will be hosting a series of activities to promote and market its institution.

This will include the launching of ‘Petit Chef’ culinary competition which will gather one student from each secondary school in the country.

They will also host the ‘Micro-trottoir’, an interaction with the crowd which will take place in town. The STA is welcoming any form of sponsors towards the activities.

One of the most interesting activities on this year’s calendar is the launch of a tourism club in each secondary school in the country.

The SHTA has agreed to prepare a scheme of work for the project, which will be given to the schools to ensure a consistent standard of delivery.

This will come through a proposed memorandum of understanding between the association and the Ministry of Education.

The World Tourism Day was set up to foster awareness among the international community of the importance of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic values.

As the official day is set aside in the United Nation’s events calendar, the celebration seeks to highlight the tourism potential to contribute to sustainable development goals (SDGs), and address some of the most pressing challenges facing the world today.