Tourism - Registered businesses learn more about the ‘Lospitalite’ campaign |17 March 2022
PS Francis addressing the gathering (Photos: Patrick Joubert)
Officers from the Tourism department who are involved with the Lospitalite campaign, under the brand ‘Lospitalite - Lafyerte Sesel’, yesterday met with businesses registered under the programme.
The aim of the meeting held at the Seychelles Trading Company’s (STC) conference room was to present the programme, its benefits as well as explaining the process and timeline ahead leading to the award ceremony to be held later in September.
It was the first of a series of three meetings which will also be held on Praslin and La Digue on Friday this week.
The session yesterday was also attended by the principal secretary for Tourism, Sherin Francis, and the director for destination planning and development, Paul Lebon.
In its first edition, Lospitalite - Lafyerte Sesel, launched on January 28, 2022, is to boost the competitiveness of the local tourism industry and further promote Seychelles as destination of choice through a high standard of service delivery.
Apart from learning from the panel about the purpose of the ‘Lospitalite - Lafyerte Sesel’ campaign, the business representatives from across all the various sectors of the tourism industry, were also briefed on the sets of criteria for the ‘Lospitalite - Lafyerte Sesel’ Award and on the importance of social media, Public Relation (PR) and ParrAP – an online digital marketing platform, to achieve successful visibility.
The set of criteria that tourism-related businesses and employees will be judged on for the ‘Lospitalite - Lafyerte Sesel’ Award 2022 include cleanliness, staff presentation and grooming, welcoming of guests, handling of client’s complaints, professional developments, engagements with clients, monitoring of guests’ satisfaction, Creole culture among others.
Anonymous monitoring and evaluation visits will run from April 2022 to August 2022 while nomination of employees for the award will be in June 2022. Among the nominees, the public will also be able to nominate their own favoured tourism businesses and favoured tourism employees through a People’s Choice to be held in August. This will also include feedbacks from the foreign visitors.
As the message was very clear during the presentations, only one matter of concern was raised among the participants during question time that was related to littering of beaches and other places in the environment which are impacting on the experiences of our visitors.
In her closing remarks, PS Francis thanked the registered businesses for believing in and endorsing the programme.
She stated that, through the collaborative journey with the Tourism department, the participants will surely gain benefits in terms of visibility locally and abroad, and support from the ministry.
With regard to the question on littering, PS Francis said that the ministry is aware of the situation and is working with relevant stakeholders to find a solution to the problem, taking into account that the public have and is still being targeted with many education awareness programmes on the issue but they keep carry on with this malpractice.
Mr Lebon later said he was very satisfied with the turnout and the number of registered businesses for the first edition of the ‘Lospitalite - Lafyerte Sesel’.
He added that for the second edition to be launched in September, non-related tourism businesses will also be included in the programme.
He stated that taking into account the current world situation, hospitality in the tourism industry in this time is primordial.
Patrick Joubert