(Posted 03rd August 2023)
INTERVIEW WITH ALAIN ST.ANGE BY CHRISTINE OUMA
Rebroadcast by ATCNews with explicit permission by Mr. Alain St. Ange
“Visibility in tourism is Success. If you are not visible, you fade out,” said Alain
St. Ange. 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
roots,” 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.
Alain St. Ange, as Founding President of the African Tourism Board, his role
entailed rebuilding confidence in intra-Africa Tourism. The Board was
conceived at a time when the world economy was tight, and secondly, when
the Covid-19 pandemic was already on the African doorstep.
Together with other Experts, they figured that Africa would need something to
help find itself on the world Tourism Map.
He explained that the problem for Africa is that if for example, today there is
an outbreak of Ebola in a small village somewhere, the world would report;
‘There is Ebola in Africa!’ and Africa loses business.
“We said, let us bring Africa together – Tourism Boards and Private sector
organisations together, for us to re-write our own narrative,” he said.
As St. Ange cautions, Africa as a continent need to re-write its own narrative to
tell the world about the good things – put the challenges into context but also
say the good things that happen.
“And we have a lot of good things that happen in Africa. But we are unable to
say them because we are divided in our approach. And often times we are
fighting our own little battles forgetting that if we fought a battle as a
continent, we would all succeed,” he noted about the idea of Africa possibly
coming together to work a team.
And when Covid-19 pandemic really hit hard, the African Tourism Board had a
HOPE project where they (Africa Tourism Board) sought help from different
bodies to help Africa retrain people and help re-open and re-organise tourism.
That really helped for a while and fortunately, Covid-19 cases started going
down, explained St. Ange.
Although he has since moved on to other projects -mainly steering the Saint
Ange Tourism Consultancy, he is still part of the Africa Tourism Board and
helps whenever need be.
Despite his success as a Tourism Icon, he has also faced some challenges
including when he ran to become the Secretary General of the United Nations
World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) in Seychelles bid to get Africa to lead
this UN Body. But politics came into play and this ambition was cut off.
You are probably wondering how this played off.
Well, St. Ange believes Seychelles ‘unfortunately shot itself at the foot.’
St. Ange had been nominated by then President Faure and his name had
appeared on the ballot paper, however, the election process had not started
yet.
St. Ange believes that if today, it was a Seychelles National flying the flag at the
UNWTO in Spain, at a time when the country highly depends on Tourism,
Seychelles and the rest of Africa would be much more successful.
Following court proceedings, the former Minister of Tourism for Seychelles,
Alain St. Ange, won his case against the Government of Seychelles before the
Court of Appeal, which awarded him $507,000. St Ange had brought the
government to court after it withdrew its endorsement for his candidature for
the post of Secretary-General of the UNWTO in 2017 on the eve of the election.
In his upcoming autobiography, St. Ange talks about the ‘UNWTO Saga’.
St. Ange’s very own Tourism Consultancy (Saint Ange Tourism Consultancy) has
been actively working with Tourism Boards, Ministers of Tourism and also the
Private Sector groupings all over Africa and in the ASEAN Block.
The work he does is twofold; one, he works with Tourism Boards where he sits
with them, plan ahead together and while there, see what they are doing, see
how they are being portrayed in the world market and share advise.
“It also gives me an insight into the continent and as the Deputy Secretary-
General of FORSEAA (Forum of Small Medium Economic AFRICA ASEAN) and
the new Vice President of Egypt based African – Asian Union. So, I am well
placed,” he shared.
But, he does many more on behalf of various countries and organisations.
Tourism in Africa. How does St. Ange see it? According to him, the in-bound to
Africa has a lot of potential. According to official statistics, Africa gets just
about 6% of world travelers. “This is sad for the continent” he said.
Sun, sea and sand, Safaris, Waterfalls, Historical sights – you name it, Africa has
many unique selling points, however, sooner or later, Africa needs to speak
with one voice for its tourism industry to thrive.
Regional bodies, for example, the Vanilla Islands (Indian Ocean), East Africa,
West Africa, Central Africa, Northern Africa and more could all come together,
have a chairman who could speak to the African Union and put Africa into a
new dimension. It is a dream for Africa, but a possible dream, St. Ange noted.
And when Africa is united in a body, he says, VISA issues and travel across the
borders would be swift.
What about thoughts on the Seychelles Tourism Industry today? I asked.
“Well, every Minister will guide his Ministry to what he believes in. Often, it’s
not just the Minister but the Government of the day that sets avenues/areas of
focus,” he noted.
According to St. Ange, Tourism will remain the number 1 pillar of the country’s
economy for many years, and Seychelles needs to ‘breath tourism, live
tourism, sleep tourism, eat tourism –and basically do everything tourism as it is
the number one pillar of the economy.’
“If there is one thing that will get us to realise the importance of Tourism, just
go back a few years ago, when there was Covid-19 pandemic and almost no
commercial planes were arriving; and how we were so desperate for tourism
arrivals,” he posed.
St. Ange continues to receive recognition on the continent and abroad for the
work that he does. From the ‘Plaque of Honour’ at the House of Lords, London
to the Key to the City Awards in the USA. The list goes on. A very recent one is
the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award for Promotion of the Travel Trade’ by
Pacific Area Writers Association, an Affiliate Member of the UNWTO at ITB
Tourism Trade Fair in Berlin Germany in March 2023. In fact, there is an article
on ACTNews dated 10 July 2023 (Tourism & Travel – discovering a leader that
stands tall…Meet Alain St. Ange) that is dedicated to the Awards and Accolades
St. Ange has received.
“It all shows that people appreciate what I do and how I do it. During the
Tourism Week celebrations of September 2017, the Seychelles Tourism Board
presented me with a ‘Certificate of Recognition’ for the valuable contribution
to Seychelles’ Tourism Industry as Seychelles Tourism Board Director of
Marketing and Chief Executive Officer and as Seychelles’ Minister of Tourism.
But, the success is not just by me, I got the private sector to work with me
and the government to understand me, Seychelles was a Team and working as
one with us, the Team at the Tourism Board. That was and is so important. You
need the private sector to feel heard, and to also appreciate the challenges
they face,” he urges.
St Ange has spent pretty much his entire life working in the Tourism Industry.
His interest was sparked by his father who ran a Tourism Establishment on La
Digue Island – the third highest inhabited Island of Seychelles. He also worked
with Destination Management Companies to Private Sector Trade on Mahé. He
has also worked overseas in hotels.
He describes himself as an ‘all-rounder’ in his approach in tourism.
“I understand every segment of it which is why I receive many requests to
Travel around the world and I enjoy it. Apart from politics, I have lived, worked, ate, slept and still live Tourism,” he
added.
“To the people of Seychelles; Appreciate Tourism. It is our bread, butter and
the jam on top!”
