“Visibility in tourism is Success. If you are not visible, you fade out,” Alain St. Ange:- BY CHRISTINE OUMA

Published on OZORDI DIMANS OF TODAY NEWSPAPER

A successful Tourism Minister of Seychelles who turned tourism around to reach new heights. His name – Alain St. Ange. When he was working in the Private Sector, the sector asked the government to have someone from the Private Sector to lead Tourism. That was in 2011 and at the time, the government was forecasting a (minus) -25% in visitor arrival numbers and that would impact the economy.

The government of the day accepted to discuss this on and off and finally, a consensus was reached. The government was prepared to give only the marketing part of the destination to the private sector through a Board and a Director of Marketing from their ranks. It was controlled by the private sector but paid for by the state – and that was a massive departure from a very State controlled system, he said.

“I came in, at the time when Seychelles needed the help. Before that, I was at Denis Island where I was employed to rebuild the Resort on the Island. I was working with the Masons Group and responsible for their hotels including Denis,” narrated St. Ange.

When President Michel finally called him, he was asked if he was interested to lead the marketing of the country. His first reaction was, “Yes, but I do not want to be employed. I will take it as a 6 months’ contract.”?He was confident that the six months would be enough to turn it around and then return it back to the government.

The first mission then was to go on a trip with Vice - President Joseph Belmont who held the Tourism Portfolio. Together St. Ange and Belmont did a 4-city tour in two days to meet tour operator partners and the Press. They did breakfast in one, lunch in another and dinner in the other, and that was to give a new impetus to tourism and to say that Seychelles was back on the map and that the destination wanted to succeed.

“This initiative opened the door for the private sector and the government to support my efforts. When I went back to the government and the private sector was also at the table, we agreed that we needed to remove too much bureaucracy,” he said.

As he explained, tourism is not something that will wait for you. “If say tomorrow we receive a call that such and such a person is in your region, I want him to fly with you and give you good coverage. We can’t go to a Board to get approval, procurement and the stages that we had to go through,” he explained. Such long processes wasted a lot of time and the country lost on so many chances to market the destination.

At the time, the then Minister for Finance was Danny Faure and the PS was Ahmed Afif, who is now the current Vice- President of the Republic. Together they agreed to form a Seychelles Marketing Fund Body that would have funds put in by the Private Sector and the government, and that opened doors.

Every month, St. Ange would meet with the President to give him a run-down on what was happening.

The six-months contract elapsed and President Michel offered St. Ange the position of CEO of the Board of Tourism.

During the first year as CEO, St Ange studied the government’s actions and noted that the government was not listening enough to the Private Sector. Tourism is a Private sector driven Industry and that needed to be appreciated. And that’s when the Multi-sectoral meetings were instituted.

There was dialogue across the board. According to St. Ange, this worked very well despite the government being very slow sometimes.

“Back in the late 70s, when the Irish Tourism Board took over the Seychelles Tourism Board and instituted the Tourism Board, we had said we needed to put more than just the beauty of the islands (sun, sea and sand) at the forefront. We needed to have culture – which is the people. We needed people to get involved and this amalgamated tourism showed that we had more depth in what we were saying we were. Because culture also means music, dancing, the food and the diversity of our people that gave us a lot of advantage,” continued St. Ange.

Seychelles was able to showcase unity. South Africa had claimed to be the land of multiculturalism but Seychelles lives it. This is a line that St. Ange often used during his travels.

The first President of the Republic James Mancham had brought a Festival/carnival to Seychelles. When he opened the airport in 1971, he needed to put Seychelles on the map and he organized the Seychelles Festival in 1972 under the patronage of Princess Margaret and of Lord Snowdon from the United Kingdom.?

He managed to get coverage and so St. Ange had this idea to bring big press back to the shores of Seychelles. To once again make this carnival idea a massive success, to rally behind the ‘Carnival of Carnivals’.?

The second era Carnaval International de Victoria won greater international involvement and the largest contingent of international press the country has ever received. The three-day event resulted into more than 8 months of press coverage from around the globe.

“CNN, BBC, Sky News, Aljazeera, Russian TV, Chinese TV were all here to cover. We got our tourism markets to cover the event and we were frequently on the news,” added St. Ange.

According to the tourism expert, one line that is often missed in the tourism industry is that, “Visibility in tourism is Success. If you are not visible, you fade out,” St. Ange noted.

“And that is when we stressed on the five branches that makes the people of Seychelles who we are. We supported to give bigger call for Festival Kreol, as this is us today and FetAfrik as this was the feast celebrating our link to Africa. We then instigated a call for a Seychelles-India Day, Seychelles-China Day, La Francophone and Commonwealth as feasts to mark the links to our remaining qroots,” said St. Ange.

As explained by St. Ange, in doing this, he was also trying to bring unity in the country.

“If we are celebrating with you, we will get to know you and understand you,” he added.

Plus, the communities and Embassies that associated with these celebrations always went out of their way to ensure there were visiting groups from their countries and that brought in diversity that was needed. All these culminated into the carnival and there were 6 editions with the last one held in 2016.

“The Vanilla Island (Indian Ocean) participated with us. We had agreed to support each other. We had the Carnival of Carnivals, Reunion had Liberté Métisse Festival, pride of Reunion island?which marked the abolition of slavery on the island of La Reunion, Mauritius had a Golf Event, Comoros had a Food Fiesta and Madagascar had an International Tourism Fair that they did to promote tourism in the Indian Ocean Region. Maldives and Mayotte included. We all celebrated each other and in so doing, we were putting the Indian Ocean in the forefront to equal the Caribbean Style marketing approach,” St. Ange continued.

This was good and initiatives like that happens when all parties involved really want it to happen and if you don’t it dies away, he added.

The Vanilla Islands affiliation is still there but on a slow burner.

To be continued…

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