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Fist of all like to start with the biggest
goal of The Mauritius Port the close future is to reach two (…)
in the ten next years maybe what are the main plans to achieves
this huge project?
I think that the best way of looking at it is to say that we are
trying to get an increase of 10% annually in terms of tourist arrivals.
We think that it is achievable, from the base that we’re at.
There is about 800 thousand tourists this year, a bit less on that.
But obviously they control development. We think that Mauritius
has a brand, has attributes, and these attributes are paramount.
We must be kept and maintain and improve the point. It’s a
quality destination. We say it’s a bit like Mercedes cars.
You can buy S Series, you can buy sports model, or you can buy the
A series its up to you which one you want to buy. But when you are
buying a Mercedes and when you are coming to Mauritius you have
always the quality, the security, the environment, the hospitality.
These are the attributes to the destination that we are maintaining
with the objective of increasing arrivals by 10%. So when you come
to Mauritius you could stay in a five star plus or in a three star
plus but you are in Mauritius.
So you think it’s possible to increase and to reach
this number and keep the quality of the product?
It’s vital that we are able to do that, that’s why
we said 10%; 10% is not a huge amount of increasing. We can do it
very easily.
And what’s the part of the ministry in this plan?
Are you facilitating the investment or are you promoting the island?
We are in charge of the promotion;we take care of promotion, we
take care of regulation, that is we regulate “two recent aplises”
to make sure they offer value for money and they gave and they describe
properly the services and the other supplies when you come here.
So you are supporting the quality…
The quality of the services that are provided, whether hotels restaurant,
discotheques, whatever is open to the tourist. So we do that and
then we are in charge of promotion, we promote the island overseas.
But likely for us “for the new generation” it’s
a very popular destination there is pose of excellence I think Mauritius,
Seychelles, and Maldives and these pose of excellence are helping
to promote the “in generation” so we don’t have
“meliorated” difficulties
Concerning the procedures adopted what are the target countries?
Which market I mean?
Obviously we have a main market that is still Europe: France, Great
Britain and now Italy and then Germany. These markets provides us
basically with a lot of tourist during the big seasons but there’s
also the importance of filing the room during low seasons and low
seasons markets are India, Australia, all the south you know, south
Africa, reunion island next to us. And we are told also Spain could
be an interesting off season destination for us.
Why do you think that?
Because I’m told a lot of people travel from April to September
and our high season is from September, October to march so in fact
it is a good market for us with that in mind
And you also market the plus 50 seniors?
We don’t have specific but I mean we market a destination
and then we spend like 10 million dollars a year to market the destination
and the private sector spends about 13 million dollars a year so
obviously everybody finance
And concerning France do you think you can still increase?
France? Yes… in fact France now we have much more capacity
in terms of airline
With Corsair coming twice a week with the seven for seven and
it’s also coming now for the first time from a provincial
town, which is Lyon so it does Paris-Mauritius and Lyon-Mauritius.
So we are trying also to widen the catchmove area the base from
where… So we think obviously France is a “traditional
market and there is still able to grow but we are divert quiet to
strong market” and eventually (……)
We can hear some italian speaking in the streets in Mauritius (…)
The problem we have with Spain is that there’s no direct
fly so one of the objective of going to Spain next week is to try
and encourage an airline even to come on a special flight part of
the year direct Madrid, Barcelone I don’t know…
But not air Mauritius…it could be a Spanish…
Air Mauritius doesn’t have the plan at the moment it could
be air Mauritius eventually but short term probably we’re
looking for anyone
So during you’re travelling features you will try to maybe
speak to iberia, air Europe, spanair. Air Europa is a charter company
small one and they are very weak for this part of the year because
they are working with BA so they work in cochere so its true they
have to travel too long, not rome…
And they’re not many Spanish companies that are doing airline
The biggest is Iberia and they are focusing on South America, the
Spanish market and a bit Africa but they are using the collaboration
of BA for this market but why not? (…)
Talking about the tourism sector here in Mauritius of course
you have the sea but the desires of the tourism change a bit, when
they spend one week or 10 days on the destination they like to do
activities, the green and environmental tourism for example. Are
you adopting this for the future?
Yes, I think we are doing better and better… I think that
one of the advantages of Mauritius upon the Maldives is that we
are a real country you have everything here and people appreciate
the variety of thing you can do here you can in a commercial submarine
we have some nice adventure parks…
Because for the moment I have friends because I live in Paris also
and a lot of people are doing a double trip, they are going to the
Reunion for the green and then they come here in Mauritius
They used to they used to
They used to! so maybe it will be difficult for you to…for
french people at least to offer it…
We don’t have the amount that the reunion has and the reunion
is more adventure if you want to climb mountains we cant match that
but there are nowadays more adventure parks that you can go to and
we are developing cultural tourism we have the festival creole last
year and we have this year again we are developing some of the museums,
the Citadelle here would becoming a big museum of the history of
Mauritius. There are a lot of exciting little things happening here
as far as Mauritius is concerned. We will be able to do some jet
sky soon but offshore, outside of the reef…
Really? And the ministry is working on all those…
Yes, we are working on diversifying the … we are having a
shopping festival you know Mauritius is very well known for textile
and we have some great designers too here. I’m not sure of
the dates yet but for two weeks of the year. So we are making it
more varied. We have a pirotechniques festival too in april or maybe
easter.
All those projects might help you to make the tourist come back
actually
And we want the tourist to come out of the hotel, you know you
have to just come out and see this…and not just like shutting
himself in a hotel.
Is the all-inclusive system a problem for you?
Not really, we are in fact going to ask some of the all-inclusive
hotel to create a interfaces with the local population so that they
are able to meet and trade. We are going to ask “ok you are
having all inclusive but at the same time allow the interface with
Mauritians” because in fact we think that the main advantage
of Mauritius is the hospitality of the population. You can have
nice hotels on beaches anywhere
And you have a true cultural offer for the cooking, the
history and everything
Yes, we are developing as you said in terms of the creole food,
local food there will be more to do in Mauritius.
As businessman are constantly looking for new investment
opportunities can you mention some investment opportunities here
in this tourism sector?
Well there has always been a lot of interesting investing in Mauritius
in the hotel sector, the question is to kept land but there has
always been a lot of interest in that sector. What we see nowadays
is a lot of interest in prestigious projects wich are good but we
have room for all types of hotels we have room for 3star to a five
star but the investment is not handle by me its more by the board
of investment so they will be more able to tell you. All I can say
is that we have room for all and as we move along the path to increasing
our tourists numbers that means we have opportunities for para-hotel
industries you know restaurants adventure parks everything, aquariums
everything. For example you may want to rent yatch whatever you
want to do which will serves the tourism industry. We are very open
to encourage that.
Recently we meet a French guy here and he is starting a
medical company and now he is working on private yatch rental and
that’s something very interesting for business. That’s
a business opportunities.
Yes, this is something we don’t really have here. They have
it in Seychelles
And you don’t have to come with a lot of money because
if you are checking the investment for the hotel it’s quite
expensive and you have come with big foot.
Yes but there’s a lot of small projects you can have. We
think that foreign investment not only brings in capitals, they
also brings in very important know-how and know-how is important
for culture and “welfare” and all comes together with
foreign investment and… but should talk to BOI they will tell
you about IRS. But there’s everything, investment are wide,
we have helicopters services. We love competition and we are open
to many other investments.
A more personal question… What is your greatest satisfaction
as a minister of tourism so far?
Well, I think we have been able to make the sector dynamic; we’ve
made the sector responsive to the needs of the tourists. This year
I will be proud to fill the low seasons and to make Mauritius very
present on the web. So the electronic communication will be a big
priority this year. And we are thinking of doing a little game based
on the dodo, we haven’t got to it yet. And the other priority
will be to continue to improve the product and to give even better
deals to the tourist that comes and lastly as I mentioned Mauritius
represents in the eye of people there’s attributes and we
would like to reinforce these attributes and make them standard
even clearer so last thing I was proud to do get tourism (…)
you know in terms of dynamic marketing and just getting this industry
dynamics and I think we have done that and this year it’s
just a continuation of that…
But last year you’ve had to face the chikungunya
problem and we hope it’s gonna be better for you. But comparing
to la reunion, Mauritius was quite ok with this problem. You didn’t
suffered so much. And apparently you’ve worked a lot on that
because apparently people are now concerning, they are working on
that.
Yes, I mean it’s a very funny thing. It came out of nowhere
and now it’s gone (laugh). But we think it was important and
so long as we don’t have it in neighbouring reunion.
You worried about the problem more than your neighbours…you
took it very seriously…
No, I don’t know, I don’t want to compare. It was something
that was important so now I think it’s under control and that’s
a very good thing.
I left to ask you your message to our readers…
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