Seychelles' delegates returning from the Spanish international travel trade fair FITUR, have arrived back on Mahé with little good news to report from the Iberian peninsula.

Despite record international participation, which has seen FITUR reach the same level of importance as the London, Deauville and Berlin fairs, the bubbles seem to have gone flat for the Seychellois participants at the event.

The Seychelles Tourism Marketing Authority (STMA) reports that  local companies were unable to capitalise on FITUR for two main reasons;

"The foremost is the usual reproach of imbalanced price-quality ratio for our product, that it has become more and more difficult for tour operators and travel agents to sell Seychelles."

"Secondly, the fact that the Madrid (Seychelles Travel) Office has regular contacts with them almost all-year-round, very few came to our stand, thus limiting our meetings to former contacts in the absence of new ones."

And according to the STMA information, the news from the Spanish tourism professionals is that the outlook for Seychelles sales is proving equally arduous.

"The Spanish travel trade is unanimous in the verdict that Seychelles is more than ever difficult to promote and sell and this despite the growing material affluence in Spain."

"These very professionals acknowledge the beauty and the enticing intact environment of our islands but these arguments are just not enough to convince potential tourists who stick to a certain budgetary level vis-à-vis services being offered."

The FITUR fair was attended by a six member Seychelles delegation and ran from 28 January to 1 February.

Held in the Juan Carlos Exhibition Centre in Madrid, the 24th edition of FITUR attracted some 100,000 tourism professionals, a significant increase on previous years.

It also enjoyed a record level of group participation, as over 11,028 companies from 170 countries vied for prominence.

Despite the overall gloomy news to come back from Madrid, the STMA information did add that the delegation was able to hold a number of very positive meetings with a variety of tourism workers and travel trade journalists.

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