Photo: Mrs. Sherin Francis- Principal Secretary of Tourism Department
The Seychelles Island’s initiatives to restart tourism in a safe, responsible way are bearing some fruits as the island nation has surpassed fifty percent of its arrivals target before the pandemic.
Speaking to VoyagesAfriq on the state of tourism from Mahe, Mrs. Sherin Francis Seychelles’ Principal Secretary of Tourism said the Department of Tourism has managed to catch up with almost 50% of the country’s arrivals.
“This year we have managed to catch up with almost 50% of our arrivals compared to the performance we did in 2019”
“And this performance was predicted at the beginning of this year, even though we had taken account of all the pandemic challenges confronting us which still exist”
According to her, even though the new Covid 19 variable exists, the Ministry was optimistic considering the worldwide vaccination programme.
Mrs. Francis postulated that despite the travel restrictions across its main markets, the ministry is hoping by the end of 2022 the country should have at least about two-third to about three-quarters of arrivals compared to the year 2019.
She posited that the reason the ministry is not too precise about arrival figures as compared to 2019 is “because as you know we are still in the pandemic period, there are new variants and we just had the omicron virus that was discovered two weeks ago and will affect travels.”
