Charter flights between Sofia and Mahé |02 February 2022
Mr Behar expressing his love for Seychelles
‘A dream come true that will help Seychelles a lot,’ says Maxim Behar
“It is a dream come true to see a direct flight between Sofia and Mahé,” Seychelles’ honorary consul general in Bulgaria Maxim Behar has told Seychelles NATION.
The first of a series of charters from Sofia, Bulgaria to Mahé for the year 2022, arrived on Sunday. The Bulgaria Air, Airbus320, landed at the Seychelles International Airport at 8am with 180 passengers from the Balkan region.
The charter was made possible by the tourism department, 7° South Ltd and Bulgarian partners – Luxutour, Exotic Holiday, Marbro Tours and Planet Travel Centre as the main organiser and Mr Behar himself.
Said Mr Behar: “I was in Seychelles in May last year and simply spontaneously picked the phone and called my good friend Anna Butler-Payette, the chief executive of 7˚ South Ltd company and just said one simple sentence: ‘Anna, the time has come, we must start thinking of organising direct flights from Sofia to Mahé!’”
Mr Behar added that this was indeed his dream project as Sofia is located on a real crossroad between Europe and Asia and he was pretty sure the location is really crucial.
“But we had to start from Bulgaria and coincidentally the biggest tour operators in the country ‒ Planet Travel Center and Luxutour ‒ joined the project and were later joined by Exotic Travels and Marbro Tours. Just a couple of days ago the first direct charter flight from Sofia landed full with 180 happy Bulgarian tourists on board and the next flight in three weeks is already sold out. It is an extremely good sign because the typical visitors to Seychelles traditionally come from Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Israel and some other big countries and the only chance for Seychellois tourism to succeed more of course is to enlarge this list.
“What happened with Bulgaria, I think, is an excellent example for many other countries all over the world. And it did not happen as a miracle, it was just sustainable and creative hard work for all those years. I had literally hundreds of interviews talking about Seychelles in local and international press, produced a couple of movies about the country, one of them in full length transmitted a couple of times by the Bulgarian National TV Channel 1, published thousands of posts, pictures and articles all over social media, organised a number of exhibitions and promotions of Seychelles tourism, many of them together with the 7˚ South Ltd company management,” said Mr Behar.
He added that the next steps are also very important. “I have to publicise this project all over neighbouring and other European countries, so Sofia may become an European hub for travel to Seychelles and this is really my next project. My main rule in life always have been: If your dreams don't scare you, it means they are not big enough. And dreaming about the success of my beloved Seychelles means only one thing ‒ hard work combined with innovative ideas.”
Mr Behar started working as Seychelles’ honorary consul general in Bulgaria some 18 years ago and at that time not more than 20 Bulgarians visited the beautiful Seychelles.
“My love for the country, mainly for its people, turned to a very hard work to benefit Seychelles. I initiated the Seychelles Investment Forum back in 2010, the websites and communications tools of State House, Ministry of Foreign affairs and Tourism, Ministry of Finance, was co-founder and main sponsor of the launch of the Seychelles News Agency (SNA) and the new modern website of the Seychelles NATION newspaper. I also had tonnes of other great initiatives and projects. All of them were of course entirely pro-bono and are just an expression of my love, belonging and commitment to our beautiful country, to its people and institutions,” concluded Mr Behar.
Gerard Govinden