IFTM Top Resa |04 October 2021

Mrs Willemin

Tourism Seychelles set for Paris travel trade rendezvous

Tourism Seychelles will be participating in its first in-person major international travel trade exhibition since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This was announced by Bernadette Willemin, director general of Destination Marketing for the Tourism department, prior to leaving for IFTM Top Resa taking place in Paris from October 5-8.

Mrs Willemin will be joined at the travel trade show, which targets the leisure, Group, Business and MICE & Events segments, by Paris-based representatives of Berjaya Hotels, Creole Travel Services, LXR Mango House and Mason’s Travel.

On-line participants will include North Island, Kempinski Seychelles and Blue Safari Seychelles.

Explaining the return to physical participation in such events, Mrs Willemin said, “While we have been constantly in touch with them virtually, our physical presence has been missed and is long-awaited by our partners. We must not forget that competition is becoming ruthless and as our competitors open up to tourism, it has become important that we are also seen in person.

“We have four full days of appointments already scheduled with our major tour operators, trade partners and partner airlines. We will be meeting with press and media off site as well. The show is timely especially as vaccinated French visitors no longer have to undergo quarantine when they return home and this is giving the impetus for tour operators and other partners to put together their winter programmes and actively sell holidays to Seychelles. We will also have added seat capacity and more connectivity between Paris and Seychelles once Air France recommences twice weekly flights to Seychelles for the winter season from October 28.”

This year the show has been formulated to accommodate ‘hybrid participation’, Mrs Willemin said.

“We, as well as everyone else, have had to adapt and reinvent how we collaborate with our partners and how we reach our customers; hence giving our local partners this opportunity to take part in the trade exhibition virtually as well as in person. Of course we have had to scale down our footprint, both in terms of the size of our stand and the number of people present, and we will be respecting all the sanitary measures in place. Our team in Paris will be supporting us on the stand.”

The French market is a significant one for Seychelles, as the destination’s second leading market it contributed over 11% of visitor arrivals (43,297) and over 16% of arrivals from Europe in 2019.

Tourism Seychelles will be joining over 34,000 tourism professionals representing 200 destinations and 1,700 brands at IFTM Top Resa.

Press release from the department of Tourism