TSS head offices in Victoria.  Despite being purchased by Joe Albert, owner of Creole Holidays, TSS will remain a separate business entity

Businessman Joseph Albert has acquired Travel Services Seychelles (TSS) from Mauritius-based conglomerate Ireland Blyth Limited (IBL), both sources confirmed on Thursday November 6.

As part of the transaction, however, TSS will not fall under Creole Holidays – one of TSS’s main competitors – which is also owned by Mr Albert. 

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“I did not buy (TSS) for a rupee,” Mr Albert joked in a press conference on Thursday at TSS’s offices in Victoria, alongside TSS general manager David Germain and executive director for IBL’s tourism branch, Patrick Moisan.

Mr Albert said that TSS and Creole Holidays, despite sharing the same ownership, would continue to act as separate destination management companies (DMCs).

The deal was partly contingent, Mr Moisan said, on an assurance from Mr Albert to keep TSS, incorporated some 30 years ago, intact as a separate entity to protect the jobs of its employees and secure the company’s future prosperity.

“A company with such a value as TSS was not meant to be sold to just anyone,” Mr Moisan said.  “IBL feels that we have certain duties to ensure the welfare of the people working at TSS, some of whom have been working with us for many years.”

Mr Moisan said that given Mr Albert’s experience in the industry, along with an already friendly business relationship between the two parties, IBL felt it was leaving TSS in the right hands.

No foreign bids to purchase TSS were considered, Mr Moisan added.

“Seychelles comes out the big winner in all of this,” Mr Albert said.  “Seychellois ownership of TSS will enhance the confidence of local and overseas partners and contribute to the development of the Seychelles tourism industry.”

Keeping TSS and Creole Holidays separate, he said, would also maintain the continuity of the DMC sector in Seychelles.

Any effort to combine the two could lead to conflicts for competing firms overseas that would be reluctant to use the same DMC, said Mr Germain, who will remain as TSS’s general manager.

Although in theory TSS and Creole Holidays are to still function as competitors, both Mr Albert and Mr Germain indicated that the two companies would have to yield to each other in certain scenarios or markets.

Mr Albert said that with TSS already a strong player in the British market and Creole Holidays particularly affluent in France, he saw no reason to disturb that current set-up.

“Each company will do what it does best,” Mr Albert said.

Although he conceded that tourism in Seychelles has been sliding, Mr Albert said he was optimistic about his plans to rejuvenate TSS. 

An infusion of capital, he said, would put “new engines” on what would eventually be a “a mighty ship,” but Mr Albert placed a two-year time frame on getting the company where he wanted it.

IBL’s decision to sell TSS comes on the heels of the company’s recent sale of White Sand Tours, its former DMC for Mauritius.

Mr Moisan said that IBL’s tourism branch was withdrawing from the DMC sector in both Mauritius and Seychelles to focus instead on hotel development.

“The strategy of tourism is being re-engineered and re-designed,” Mr Moisan said.  “We remain heavily present in tourism … but with a concentration on a certain type of activity, namely hotels.”

IBL, the second-largest conglomerate in Mauritius, has interests in Alphonse Island Resort and also the current hotel project on Desroches, as well as a number of hotels in Mauritius and mainland Africa.

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