On May 30, Tourism Seychelles conducted a Seychelles-specific event at the Movenpick Hotel and Residences Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for selected trade and media partners.
The ‘Recovery in Tourism’ private event took place in conjunction with Mr Sylvestre Radegonde, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Tourism, and Mrs Bernadette Willemin, Tourism Seychelles Director General for Destination Marketing, visiting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the first time. Mr Ahmed Fathallah, the Tourism Seychelles representative in the Middle East, accompanied them. The Tourism Seychelles team was pleased with the attendance of 85 partners, many of whom have been working closely with Tourism Seychelles to boost the destination’s awareness.
Starting off the programme with his speech, Minister Radegonde expressed his appreciation towards the Saudi Arabian travel partners for their support and dedication in the promotion of Seychelles. “I would like to express my utmost gratitude to our travel trade partners here in Saudi Arabia for being with us in tonight’s event, ‘Recovery in Tourism’. I speak for everyone when I say all of us faced many challenges during the pandemic, especially within the tourism and travel industry. As the world finally begins to open, we welcome you, our trade partners, who were with us all throughout this journey as tourism in Seychelles recovers”, said Mr. Radegonde.
The team presented the diversity of the destination and introduced other interesting attributes for Saudi Arabian travelers, such as the workcation program, family-friendly holiday destination, and island-hopping adventure destination, during the event, moving the audience away from the honeymoon, sun-sea, and sand island misconceptions.
“Appreciation is an understatement of what we genuinely feel towards our commercial and media partners in Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Fathallah says, referring to the gratitude shown to trade and media partners. Our trade and media partners who continued to show their unwavering support in promoting and raising awareness for the destination during the travel industry’s difficulties that we all experienced up until its recovery during the previous months. And for that, we are sincerely grateful to each and every one of them.”
Throughout the evening, the Seychelles team kept trade and media partners up to date on the latest information on safe travel in Seychelles, in order to increase travel confidence.
“We are delighted by the outcome of tonight’s event. We express our gratitude in further strengthening our support to our travel trade and media partners here in Saudi Arabia in any way we can. We are feeling positive moving forward and now that we are experiencing a speedy recovery in the tourism industry, I firmly believe that this is just the beginning of making positive impact to the Saudi market and the overall GCC region”, Ms. Willemin expressed
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tourism – Foreign Affairs Department, Republic of Seychelles.