Seychelles scoops yet another award in China |22 September 2012
The Tourist’s Choice Award in Originality for best design and decorated booth was received by the Mayor of Victoria, Jacqueline Moustache-Belle.
"Tourism Makes City Life Even Better" was the core concept for the WTCF 2012 held from September 13-16.
Wang Anshun, the acting Mayor of Beijing, had extended an invitation to the Mayor of Victoria to take part in the newly established World Tourism Cities Expo, which is a yearly event set up by the Beijing Municipal Government, and consequently, the Mayor agreed to also enlist Victoria as one of the founding members of WTCF.
The Federation aims to cultivate a platform for mutually beneficial cooperation and development among tourism cities. The corporation is tasked to strengthen the communication and the collaboration among its members, sharing experiences, investigating city tourism development, enhancing cooperation in developing tourism markets, elevating tourism development level and promoting coordinated economic and social development in tourism cities.
As part of the event, through the combined efforts of the embassy of Seychelles in China and the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB) in Beijing, Victoria showed its presence in Beijing’s busiest pedestrian street of Wangfujing and showcased the Seychelles brand to over 200,000 passers-by per day with an invigorating and unique booth design.
“Both the embassy and the STB did a great job in designing and showcasing our booth, which reflected the concept of our local Kaz Kreol,” said Mayor Moustache-Belle.
The booth displayed local products such as the miniature kazye, images of Victoria, the coco de mer and the catkin which caught the eye of most curious onlookers.
However, the highlight for the visitors at the booth was the chance to savour the taste of our local banana and breadfruit chips brought all the way from home.
At the opening ceremony, Beijing’s acting Mayor Mr Wang was at Victoria’s booth, which 
“Creating awareness for Seychelles as a holiday destination to the public in Wangfujing couldn’t have been better and this proved to be very effective since the topics of conversation that caught my attention as I walked the streets of Beijing after the event was long over was about planning holidays to Seychelles,” said Jean-Luc Lai-Lam from the STB China office.
STB’s chief executive, Elsia Grandcourt, said it is most encouraging for the STB to receive two awards within a week of each other.
“The Seychelles destination is becoming more and more visible and known among the Chinese holidaymakers. Our visitor arrival figures of this week shows a record of 117% increase above the same period last year. The STB continues to fervently promote the destination and to showcase the key unique selling points that make the Seychelles islands stand out and different from the other island destinations,” Mrs Grandcourt added.
“We are capitalising on what the embassy and STB learned in Shanghai in 2010 and Yeosu this year, and this award really shows we learned a lot and we know how to be different from others and attract maximum public attention. We now have to work hard to make Victoria fully eligible and well equipped to host a WTCF general assembly in 3 or 4 years’ time,” said Seychelles’ resident ambassador in China, Philippe Le Gall.