Seychelles features strongly on German TV travel shows |30 November 2008

The weather in Frankfurt last Saturday, November 22, was minus 2°C with snow, making it a perfect day for Germans to stay at home, watch Seychelles on TV and then call their travel agents to book their next holiday here.

This was the logic that led the makers of Voxtours, which appears on the Cologne-based VOX channel, to come here earlier this year and make two programmes on the islands for screening during the European winter.

Last Saturday’s film focused on three German women who live in Seychelles and have made the islands their new home. Each has found a niche in our economy that allows her to combine her job with what their friends in Germany might consider a “permanent vacation”.
 
Runi Brandt discovered the demand for fresh fruit juices, Doris Salat pilots one of the helicopters – Zil Air – that will shuttle tourists between the islands, and Natalie Kerndler handles incoming guests from Germany and Eastern Europe for Creole Travel Services.

In the second part of this feature, scheduled to be shown next February, the team accompanies a German couple on a typical Seychelles holiday to show viewers at home what they might do here.

During the shoot, they spend time on Denis Island – with Mason’s Travel – and at Labriz Silhouette as well as four days on a yacht provided by Dreamyacht Charter.

The Voxtours team shot both episodes while visiting Seychelles in September accompanied by Edith Hunzinger, the regional manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland based at the Seychelles Tourist Office in Frankfurt.

Voxtours has often reported on Seychelles in the past, and the country has become a destination regularly featured on Wolkenlos (Cloudless), another VOX channel travel programme with a similar concept.

One of the Wolkenlos episodes previously produced with the support of Ms Hunzinger will be repeated in January to complete VOX’s Seychelles triple feature this winter, which is likely to have a positive impact on travel from this market.

Unlike other travel programmes, the critically acclaimed Voxtours presents only one country or region at a time. VOX has a market share among German TV households of up to 11%, and the programmes have had up to 1.3 million viewers per episode.

Each programme is aired repeatedly in different time slots throughout the week and in reruns over years to come. The accompanying website www.voxtours.de which also offers background information on the featured destination has more than half a million hits per month.