STB presents mid-year destination marketing strategy |23 July 2020
STB chief executive Sherin Francis
Seychelles Tourism Board chief executive Sherin Francis presented the 2020 mid-year destination marketing strategy to the destination’s industry stakeholders on July 17, 2020.
The virtual presentation conducted via the ZOOM online meeting platform was held from the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB) headquarters at Botanical House, Mont- Fleuri.
The mid-year destination marketing strategy presentation follows a series of consultative meetings between the STB market representative based around the globe and the tourism stakeholders in Seychelles. The presentation, which reflected the deliberations of the past two weeks’ meetings stressed on the STB marketing strategy to reposition the destination in the face of the current world situation.
The strategy presented for the rest of 2020 by the destination’s tourism board emanates at an opportune time as Seychelles prepares itself to welcome commercial flights as of August 1, 2020.
Focusing on safe tourism as part of the main component of the strategy, Mrs Francis reiterated on the precautionary procedures being taken by the destination through the department of tourism, department of public health and other local stakeholders.
“STB’s main focus as we market the destination is promoting safe tourism to build the confidence of our visitors who envisage travelling to Seychelles. Based on market research and the various travel trends we see developing we are repositioning ourselves as being versatile and flexible to cater for various travel needs,” said Mrs Francis.
“I would like to thank everybody who has and continues to contribute ideas towards possible strategy the country should adopt, in this given situation, the strategy being adopted is one which is very flexible and we have to ensure that we re-adapt as the global situation evolves,” she further stated.
While she presented marketing tactics to promote the destination and increase its visibility, the STB chief executive emphasised on the destination’s plans to increase its online presence through the extensive use of the virtual platforms as part of its various publicity activities.
“The market intelligence insights gathered by our team has clearly shown that Seychelles still remains a top-of-mind destination for many people around the world. The bookings although slow remains consistent. From our market intelligence analysis, we see that there are an average of 20,000 bookings on the book for the months of July to December. The figure could be bigger as the source does not capture all the bookings to Seychelles, the challenge is not only ensuring that we retain those bookings and convert them but also build on that in the coming weeks and months,” said the STB chief executive.
Press release from STB