Tourism coordinating committee holds first meeting |31 October 2019

Minister Dogley (at head of table) chairing the first meeting of the Tourism Development Coordinating Committee

Members of the newly created Tourism Development Coordinating Committee held their first meeting this week to discuss on the term of reference of the committee and on the implementation of the Tourism Strategic Plan: Destination 2023, which was approved by cabinet early this year.

The meeting was held at the Ministry of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports and Marine office, Botanical House.

This follows the launch of Destination 2023 - a strategy for sustainable growth, whereby it was established that tourism planning and development requires the collaboration of both public and private sectors to oversee the implementation of the strategic action plan thereby ensuring that the vision of the tourism sector is achieved within the next five years.

The meeting of the 16-member committee, which comprises representatives from government ministries, departments, agencies including the Praslin Business Association, Seychelles Hospitality and Tourism Association, Seychelles Chamber of Commerce and Industry among others from the private sector, was chaired by Minister Didier Dogley.

The role of the steering committee is to monitor if the objectives of the strategic plan are being implemented and to make and to propose suggestions for review of the strategic plan to suit the implementation of the plan to achieve its target up to 2023.  

Minister Dogley said the aim of putting the steering committee together was because the ministry believes that tourism cannot be headed and be implemented by the department of tourism and some other government agencies alone but need other partners onboard to share the responsibility as tourism is cross-cutting, thus impacting on everybody involved.

As the national committee steering the implementation of the plan, their main focus will be on selected priority areas such as rebranding, marketing, human resource development, talent development, sustainable tourism and also on strengthening institutions among other things.

The committee will as from 2020 meet six times which will subject to change as progress is made.