FIRST MINISTERIAL MEETING OF THE VANILLA ISLANDS TAKES PLACE IN MAURITIUS
(Posted 14th January 2016)
The Rt. Hon. Xavier-Luc Duval, Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius chaired the first meeting of 2016 of the Vanilla Islands organization, which brings together Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, the Comoros, the Seychelles and the Maldives, most of them key players in the global tourism arena.
The ministers and heads of tourism from the Indian Ocean islands present at the meeting earlier this week looked at the statement of the audited accounts of the Vanilla Islands which was presented by Pascal Viroleau, the CEO of the organization and supported by Karine Jasmin of the EXA Firm of Auditors, who are the appointed external auditors.
(From left to right: Didier Robert, Reunion; Hissane Guy, Comoros; Xavier-Luc Duval; Mauritius; Alain St.Ange, Seychelles)
The tourism leaders from Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion, and Comoros met in Port Louis, Mauritius’ capital city, to assess the progress made by the Vanilla Islands organization.
After approving the accounts submitted, host and chairman Xavier-Luc Duval, Alain St.Ange, the Seychelles Minister of Tourism and Culture, Didier Robert, the President of the Regional Council of Reunion and Hissane Guy, the President of Comoros Tourism discussed the action plan for 2016 which was presented by Pascal Viroleau, the CEO of the Vanilla Islands.
Representatives of the different tourism offices present from the different islands of the region were also invited to present their views and share their statistics of visitor arrival numbers from the different tourism source markets for the region in 2015.
The meeting also gave the opportunity to Mr. Robert Desvaux, the President of Mauritius Tourism, to update the delegates present on the Hotel Classification Programme which will be rolled out by the island this year.
The Vanilla Islands Ministerial Meeting agreed to move forward to make the Indian Ocean region a designated cruise ship destination.
A decision was also reached of advancing discussions towards the creation of a regional low-cost airline in order to ensure better air connectivity for the region. This topic will again be addressed at the next meeting when results of some market studies, which are ongoing at present, will be table and discussed.
