Seychelles moves closer to developing a National Tourism Satellite Account
The Seychelles Island with the support and technical expertise of its international partners has moved a step closer to developing a National Tourism Satellite account.
The archipelago island in January 2019 partnered with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) out to improve the system of tourism statistics in the Seychelles and develop a first tourism satellite account (TSA) for the country. The project is nearing completion with the end of September 2022 earmarked to see the country outdoor its Tourism satellite account.
The main concept behind the TSA is to reconcile tourism demand with supply. This means that the complying authorities need to have reliable sources of information regarding demand – that is tourist expenditure, and supply – that is output from tourism industries such as accommodation, food, and beverage serving services, passenger transport, and so on. This enables the calculation of the proportion of the supply of a product (such as accommodation or passenger transport) that is purchased by tourists.
A workshop held on July 6 in Seychelles aimed at providing stakeholders with a better understanding of why visitor surveys are so important for tourism destinations, and in particular, island destinations such as the Seychelles was part of the stakeholder engagement.
The session focused on online surveys, which are a trend in collecting visitor data, how they work, and examples of best practices. It introduced the plan for conducting the Seychelles Visitor Survey online and sought ideas and suggestions in advance of this being implemented.
The workshop was facilitated by Kevin Millington, a UNWTO consultant, based in the United Kingdom. He was assisted by UNWTO senior project specialist, Bana Tamim.
On her impressions of the exercise, Senior Project Specialist from the UNWTO Ms. Bana Tamim said all stakeholders were pleased with the progress of the project activities and were looking forward to completing it to be able to reap the benefits of having a TSA for the first time.
‘’It is really a pleasure to see the progress of the project activities despite all the challenges that the project faced, especially, during the pandemic. However, the great coordination and collaboration between the stakeholders of the tourism sector in Seychelles, in addition to the transparency in sharing the information, were main factors in enabling the speedy recovery and being back on track to continue the implementation of the project activities. ‘’ Ms. Bana Tamim said.
