Seychelles ranked second in Wef travel and tourism report |16 May 2015

Seychelles has scored highly across a range of indices to win second position in the eastern and southern Africa category behind the continent’s recognised power house South Africa.

The standings have been published in the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness report for 2015.

The benchmarks employed in the report include prioritisation of T&T, international openness, price competitiveness, environmental sustainability, air transport infrastructure, ground and port infrastructures, tourist service infrastructure, natural resources and cultural resources and business travel.

In the same report, high-scoring Seychelles won second place, finishing above third-placed Mauritius, fifth-placed Kenya, seventh-placed Tanzania and ninth-placed Zambia out of a total of 18 countries.

“This report clearly shows the underlying strength of Seychelles’ tourism and the fact that, despite our small size and that of our tourism budget, we continue to punch way above our weight to be ranked second only to mighty South Africa,” said Tourism and Culture Minister Alain St Ange.

Despite considerable budget cuts, the Seychelles Tourism Board has continued to successfully diversify its tourism markets outside its traditional European markets, many of which find themselves in economic difficulties. New markets have been successfully opened in China and South Korea as well as in the United Arab Emirates, Russia and the CIS block, Africa and India.

Seychelles has also recovered well from the crippling loss of Air Seychelles’ direct services to Europe but which will recommence in July with the country’s national airline flying to Paris, France, under the current Air Seychelles/Etihad partnership offering a potential boost to tourist figures.

“What we must never lose sight of is the fact that tourism is not one dimensional. Successful tourism has many components which need to work in harmony to be effective. Tourism is not just about clever marketing because today’s discerning tourists are armed with an arsenal of tools to help them make the right choice for their hard-earned vacation: Trip Advisor; Facebook; Twitter; Wayne and a whole suite of other social media platforms that exist to provide them with the latest information and peer-generated reviews about tourism products the world over. What is of paramount importance to the success of our tourism is that the quality of the product matches our marketing of it,” added Mr St Ange.

Seychelles Tourism Board chief executive Sherin Naiken outlined some of the challenges being faced by the industry such as the prohibitive cost of inter-island transportation which undermines the viability of island-hopping, one of Seychelles’ key selling points; the excessive pricing of add-ons by accommodation establishments and service providers as some are charging over R100 for locally-bottled water.

“Tourism is a collective effort requiring the engagement, commitment and support of each and every member of our society. When a tourist is burgled or attacked on one of our country’s nature trails, we are all losers. And no amount of clever marketing will make a difference if we lose our reputation of being a secure place. Similarly, our pristine environment and its attributes must be properly maintained if we are to continue attracting visitors to what we market as one of the planet’s last sanctuaries for unique nature. Providing adequate human resources for our expanding tourism industry remains a challenge and I would ask all Seychellois working in the hospitality industry to bear in mind that working in the tourism field should be regarded as a worthy vocation, not as a part-time occupation, because that will not provide us with the quality we need,” Ms Naiken said.

“Our high scoring position in this report clearly shows that, despite the challenges we face in this extremely competitive industry, we are on the right track and is a vindication of all the hard work being put in by all tourism stakeholders. We should all be proud of our achievement," she added.

The Seychelles Tourism Board has confirmed its determination to continue to work to keep Seychelles in the forefront of the tourism world and this is why they have now moved the concentration of their action from marketing to the product side of the equation.

The Ministry of Tourism and Culture has also commented on the fact that all the possible negative happenings in Seychelles, the destination that we promote as the holiday paradise, are today being disseminated to the world for all to know and the image of Seychelles in the world tourism.

Caption:

The cover of the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness report