Last week, the UN Tourism organisation hosted two significant events on the African continent: the Brand Africa Conference, held in conjunction with the 67th UN Tourism Commission for Africa Meeting in Zambia, and the inaugural UN Tourism Regional Tourism Forum on Gastronomy in Zimbabwe. Both events attracted participants from across Africa and beyond, highlighting the continent’s diverse tourism potential.
The Director General of Destination Marketing at Tourism Seychelles Bernadette Willemin participated in both events and shared with VoyagesAfriq her positive impressions of the events and emphasised the vast, untapped potential of Africa’s tourism sector.
Brand Africa Conference: Leveraging Synergies
Willemin praised the Brand Africa Conference, noting that the learnings were tremendous.
“The session was very interesting, very enriching as well, in the sense that the main topic was Brand Africa and every opportunity that we can have to leverage and to bring it to the forefront, our individual products by synergizing with the others- particular case, with the big continent which is Africa is a plus. And we know very well that Africa is a big continent, very much untapped in terms of our offers, our diversity and variety of offers that we can offer as a continent in general,” she said.
“So, Seychelles by joining the bandwagon, it is an advantage because being part of this continent, it will be an opportunity as well to be able to leverage the communications, promoting Africa but also promoting our individual brand.”
She emphasised the potential of intra-African tourism: ” Africa happens to have also people with good purchasing power, people who travel, who take holidays, why can’t they take holidays in the Seychelles to start with. Why should they be going elsewhere? So, I think this is a little bit the advantage.”
“It is a known fact that, we’ve got a beautiful and rich continent in terms of culture, in terms of heritage, in terms of natural resources, but it’s just a matter of being able to put it out there so that we can, eventually, through tourism be able to bring the expected wealth for our respective countries and for our populations” the Director General added.
UN Tourism Regional Tourism Forum on Gastronomy: Showcasing culinary diversity
Regarding the Gastronomy Forum, Willemin highlighted its significance and outlined Seychelles’ strategy of incorporating gastronomy into its tourism offerings.
“We all know that tourists like to eat. Who doesn’t like to eat very well? And we know that today, it is on the list, in terms of motivation and this is also something we talk about to our visitors; the food, the gastronomy, just like we talk about the cultural experiences, gastronomy is part of the experience we can give to the visitor.”
She also discussed the sustainability aspect of gastronomy. ” When you look at the sustainability aspect, gastronomy plays an important role, because in Seychelles, inasmuch as we are a country which lives on importations, we also happen to have a lot of local products – good products, bio products which also help to enhance our cuisine and it has also always been on our gender to push our restaurateur, our hoteliers to put our local products in the forefront and to get our visitors as well to sample what local products we have.”
