Reunion Tourism, which has so far only benefited from VFR travel from India, is set to increase footfall to the island. To fuel this growth, Reunion Island Tourism Board has appointed Iris Reps as their representative office in India and recently conducted a four-city roadshow in Indian metros. According to Pascal Viroleau, Director Tourism, Reunion Island Tourism Board, the board plans to tap only high-end luxury FIT and honeymoon travellers, and small MICE groups from India. They are not targeting mass tourism from India due to the island’s small size and their focus on sustainable tourism, Viroleau added.
“In addition to being a small island, Reunion has few hotels, most of them boutique properties, with the largest featuring 150 rooms, which means we cannot accommodate large volumes of tourists. So our aim is to receive about 3,000 Indian visitors over the next year or two. We are already working with Akquasun and Kuoni on a large scale for the promotion and sale of the island as a destination, and will be packaging it with Mauritius and Seychelles which are established tourist destinations among Indian travellers,” revealed Viroleau.
He further added that the tourism board is designing training programmes and familiarisation trips for the travel trade in the near future. Speaking about visa applications, Viroleau stated that, being a combination destination, the process was easy, allowing the DMC that does the bookings to submit the traveller’s documents to the French embassy, ensuring that the visa would reach the visitor upon arrival at Reunion Island. The process, he added, takes no more than five days.
Reunion Island is currently connected to India via Mauritius through Air Mauritius and the local airline Air Austral. The island, along with Air Mauritius, has launched an inaugural offer to Indian travellers wherein the customer is only charged taxes for flights booked to the destination. Alefiya Singh, Director, Iris Reps further revealed that Air Austral is looking to start direct flights from Chennai to Reunion in October 2012.
“Witha large Indian population, we are well equipped to catering to Indian guests, and also have preparations in place to fly in Indian chefs for large groups upon request,” concluded Viroleau.
