Tourism Seychelles amongst first to conduct workshops across key Indian cities

Tourism Seychelles is geared up to make the most of the lost months of 2021 by promoting the destination across key cities in India. The India office successfully completed workshops with the foremost agents in Ahmedabad and Nagpur in December 2021 as well as a week-long visit to New Delhi to conduct dedicated meetings with active and potential travel agents.

In the well-attended interactive workshops, the agents shared their challenges in marketing Seychelles and discussed ways in which they can better reach their end consumers, who are vastly selective about destinations owing to current circumstances.

In a pre-COVID-19 era, Ahmedabad, Nagpur along with other Tier 2 cities closer to Mumbai had performed well, increasing arrival figures to the paradise islands of the Seychelles while also forming an audience base which was among the first to bounce back when international travel started gaining momentum.

Commenting about the workshop strategy, Ms. Lubaina Sheerazi, CEO and Co-founder BRANDit, the Marketing and PR office representing Tourism Seychelles in India said, “Seychelles has always seen traffic not only from an informed audience in metro cities but also from an affluent segment from Tier 2 markets. We have successfully been able to raise awareness for the destination in over 15 Tier 2 cities in the past years and have witnessed a visible increase in leads and conversions during pre-COVID times. However, with the pandemic severely affecting pan-India finances, we gauge a faster recovery in the travel segment from small cities and towns comprising consumers with family businesses and hence would like to continue these targeted workshops with dedicated agents across India.”

Turnout was excellent with the Ahmedabad workshop, conducted on 10th December 2021, attracting over 95% of agents invited, while the Nagpur workshop on 21st December 2021 garnered over 85% attendance.

The majority were partners looking to reconnect and learn about the recent updates in Seychelles, thus helping them in better promoting the destination.

The sales visit in Delhi was also extremely successful, Ms Sheerazi said, giving the team a real time sentiment checks as well as an update on the agents and their way of working post pandemic. The meetings proved to be fruitful in giving the team genuine insights of the changing travel trade fraternity and their approach to business in this new normal, she explained.

Emphasizing the strategic long term benefits of relationship marketing in India, Mrs Bernadette Willemin, Director General of Destination Marketing for Tourism Seychelles commented, “Relationship marketing is very important in our business, hence the necessity for Tourism Seychelles to stay in close contact with the different stakeholders on the market. Where and when possible to conduct physically events and meetings, so much the better as we build a better experience for our partners, and a deeper engagement with our business. This in turn helps to retain our partners and build up loyalty over the long term, ensuring a better sales conversion rate.

The Indian market, just like many of our traditional markets, is very trade driven thus the importance of ensuring that travel professionals amongst both wholesalers and retailers are very well versed with our product offers and also the latest development in the destination.”
Tourism Seychelles, through its India office, will continue to meet with Indian agents across the country in 2022, with a dedicated sales strategy. It hopes to form small associations with agents across India for added spillover marketing alongside trade support.