The Seychelles recovery seems to be reaching its full circle after two years of struggles and assiduous efforts from the local tourism stakeholders. Visitor arrival figures have hit the 20,000 visitors mark again, with 21, 566 tourists recorded for the first month of 2022.
With only 7,737 arrivals less than the number recorded in January 2019, for 2022, the tourism sector is slowly but surely presenting signs of a successful year for an industry considered the main pillar of the economy for Seychelles. In parallel to the arrival forecast figures shared by the Tourism Seychelles, the Director General for Destination Marketing, Mrs. Bernadette Willemin, during her presentation to partners at the marketing meeting held earlier in January.
Estimations from the Tourism Seychelles shows that the destination is anticipating between 36,000 to 76,000 visitors more than in 2021, when the destination recorded a total of 182, 849 visitors. The 2021 figures being, in turn, an increase of 59% in the numbers of arrival compared to 2020, where the destination recorded 114,858 arrivals.
Mrs. Bernadette Willemin mentioned with satisfaction that the destination is headed towards brighter days if the sanitary situation worldwide does not worsen in the course of 2021.
"The destination is slowly achieving small milestones, which surely will be transformed into bigger ones soon. Our efforts to keep our industry from succumbing to the pandemic are slowly paying off. When we compare our 2021 visitor arrival numbers to that of 2019 before the pandemic, which was our best year ever, with 384,204 visitors, we can count ourselves lucky to have been able to regain around 50 per cent of our business back. We are more determined to complete the cycle this year by reducing the gaps of the 2019 arrival numbers as much as possible," said Mrs. Willemin.
She further explains that as part of its marketing strategy, the Tourism Seychelles team will enhance its focus on boosting the demand for Seychelles on top markets mainly composed of Seychelles traditional market countries such as Germany, France or the United Kingdom while increasing the visibility and accessibility on the fast-growing markets, namely Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and tactical markets, which were very instrumental in starting the recovery.
The reports from the Seychelles National Statistics Bureau (NBS) show that the old continent is regaining its place at the top of the performing countries on the arrival charters for January 2022, Russia keeps leading the charts followed by France and Germany.
As per the latest arrival figures ending February 6, released by the NBS, 27, 123 visitors have landed in Seychelles so far, with an average number of 675 visitors per day. On the top six countries list, the destination remains a hit for Russian visitors amounting to 6,470 visitors, followed by France in second position with 3, 254 and Germany in third position with 2,484 visitors. Ukraine, United Kingdom and Switzerland are next on the list with 2,010 visitors, 1,062 visitors, and 800 visitors respectively.