From Paris to Seychelles: Meet the couple behind SeyBusiness and Seychelles Promo |25 November 2019
Christian and Valérie Delcourt
French couple Valérie and Christian Delcourt is the husband and wife team behind Multimedia Seychelles, the company which rolled out the well-known seychellespromo.com and seybusiness.com websites.
The couple decided to drastically change their lives in 2010 and move to the Seychelles from Paris after a mutual friend told them of the untapped opportunities in Seychelles, most especially in the communications and marketing sector.
“We were living in Paris, he was a sports journalist for Canal+, commentating for boxing fights and football. Meanwhile I was working for Prisma Media, which publishes magazines like ‘Gala’, ‘Voici’ and ‘Capital’,” Valérie said.
After Christian made a trip to gauge out the business potential in Seychelles and they attended an investment forum hosted by the Seychelles Investment Board (SIB) in Brussels, they discovered that they could truly use their skills acquired over years of working in media in France in Seychelles.
The Delcourts even had the opportunity to present their company to the cabinet of ministers and the then president, James Michel, in 2011.
Multimedia Seychelles is an established advertising agency and video production company which provides events coverage, television commercials and content creation.
“We are also in charge of the advert screens at the airport, which is a partnership with Romainflash, so we have done all the content for these since 2014,” Valérie revealed.
“When we arrived in Seychelles we realised that most of the hotels, guesthouses and self-caterings did not have videos, and that was shocking in 2011. At that time, there was a great shortage of video productions outside out of the ones being produced by SBC,” Christian said, adding that they were one of the first private business to venture into videography and drones.
“We came and visited these tourism establishments to offer them the tools which would allow them to be more visible online.”
Three years ago the company launched its first website, seychellespromo.com, which was created with the aim of providing tourism-related businesses with a platform to promote themselves.
With Seychelles Promo becoming an instant success, the couple decided to launch their second website, seybusiness.com, last year.
Seybusiness.com is an online business directory, which not only encompasses the tourism businesses that were already on seychellespromo.com, but also a range of other businesses from stationery and clothing shops, to restaurants, architect and quantity surveying firms to car retailers.
Over 900 businesses are presently listed on the website.
“Seychelles Promo was created to advertise Seychelles as a wonderful destination, with nice and quality videos of not only the establishments but of Seychelles, so that the country can compete with other countries in the Indian Ocean,” Christian explained.
“After we had started Seychelles Promo, more than 300 businesses approached us to build a website for them. And here in Seychelles, around 30 to 90% of businesses do not have a website, even big companies.”
“There was, of course, a high demand for a digital, multi-media marketing company. We came to the conclusion that we could not build a website for each, individual business,” Christian continued.
Hence the reason why they decided to aggregate all of these businesses under seybusiness.com, allowing businesses to receive local and worldwide visibility.
It makes use of search engine optimisation to increase traffic to the website and thereby increase the visibility of the businesses on the website.
But how does seybusiness.com work?
Each business has its own ‘mini-website’ which it uses to describe the services it provides and which it can update whenever it wants to.
The businesses can also make known if they have any sales, promotions or events going on.
“This is a big plus because they do not have to contact us to update their page. Their professional access provides them with the ability to administrate their websites through a code. They update their page all by themselves and these are instantaneous,” Valérie said.
Seybusiness.com recently signed a memorandum of understating with telecom company Airtel to provide its SeyBusiness customers with free internet access to use the website and administrate their pages.
Any Airtel customer may also access the website free of charge up to 100 MB per day.
“It’s a perfect combination between an internet provider and a digital marketing company. Everybody needs visibility and to get and have access to useful content,” the couple highlighted.
Meanwhile for the users of the website, the Delcourts has also provided them with a helpful tip on how to better make use of the website.
“We advise everyone to put the web-app icon on their mobile since it may help them when trying to find a business or event. In fact, this can even save your life. If you have a problem and are looking for a doctor for instance, you can click on the necessary category and find a doctor,” Christian said.
Android users can use the following steps to install the seybusiness.com web-app.
- Launch Google Chrome browser app. Just tap on the Google Chrome icon on your home screen or app drawer.
- Go to the website (seybusiness.com) you want to save. Enter the website in the search/text bar and press "Enter."
- Tap on the Menu button.
- Tap "Add to Home Screen” and the seybusiness.com will be readily available on your homescreen as a web-app.
While Apple users only have to tap the share button in the Safari browser and click the ‘add to home screen’ icon.
Elsie Pointe
