The Seychelles Column - By Christopher Gill

Regar Puts Foot In Mouth- “Save Air Seychelles”

Recently Regar October 15th, 2010 issue front page headline,” Save Air Seychelles”, revealed how lost the SNP are on issues that are threatening the viability of the Seychelles Tourism Industry. The SNP have been sleeping on the job so much, that when they finally wake up to an issue, they were in a daze and totally confused.
The crux of the article is that we must save Air Seychelles as Alain St. Ange (CEO of Seychelles Tourism Board) signed a 7th flight agreement with Emirates. Now Emirates can fly to Seychelles everyday of the week, opening up scheduling options for potential visitors.
The Boss at Air Seychelles, David Savy is not happy with an Emirates 7th flight. Regar is not happy about the additional flight either. But the Seychelles Tourism Trade is delighted over the extra flight.

The Trade, facing an unprecedented downturn in visitors to hotels beyond Eden Island and Ephelia and Lemuria Hotel ( both Constance Group Hotels), needs extra flights to fill up their rooms.
Regar did not mention the special deals Eden Island and Ephelia have made with Air Seychelles, for seats, at the detriment of the entire remainder of the trade over the past year. Nor did Regar mention the over 6000 potential new rooms that the Michel Administration approved, and will be coming on line soon enough. Who are you kidding snoozers?
Supply- Demand and Bottom Line
When the balance sheets come out each month, the Trade needs to focus on the bottom line and could careless who delivers the visitors to our shores at this point.
We would be happy if Air Seychelles could do the job and would support them, but the reality that Regar ignores and David Savy is silent on, is that Air Seychelles has been less than a Fifty –Fifty partner with the Trade.
This is where Regar and Savy, get it wrong. This is why Air Seychelles will fail. Unless Air Seychelles stops being run like a little fiefdom and coordinates its business plan with the Tourism business plan of STB, Air Seychelles will fail.
Complaining of lack of money is not a response for a CEO or Chairman. Both are hired and paid to find money to develop markets, unless they are hired and paid to be happy.
No Team Work , Face it, Accept it....but Change it!
The reality that Regar is blind to, since it is out of touch with the issue, and Air Seychelles denies, because its leadership is focused on self preservation, is that there is little team work in promoting Seychelles between STB and Air Seychelles, as a coordinated effort, today.
The strategy of Air Seychelles, is conjured up between David Savy and his Mauritian second man Rajiv.
Air Seychelles does not work to promote Tourism in Seychelles anymore as it was initially envisioned to do, a sort of insurance policy when other airlines were not quick enough to the draw to add a flight to service a market that the country wanted to develop.
Today, Air Seychelles as Col. Savy has said in numerous instances, is a business, and it is in the business of flying, sometimes that means it flies anywhere on Earth. Sometimes, this means Air Seychelles flies anywhere to survive, and that is where Air Seychelles has lost focus.
When a business loses focus, like a political party, no one can save the organization from itself. This applies to Air Seychelles, and it applies to SNP, as we see in Regar.
Air Seychelles flies to the Falkland Islands, it flies to Mauritius for Air Mauritius, it flies to Chennai, India, without a coordinated tourism marketing promotion in that city, it cancelled the Frankfurt leg all by itself, it flew to Maldives at one point, then the Comores Islands, when Singapore was developing along with the China market promotions last year, Air Seychelles cancelled the direct flight routed through Chennai. Direct flights from the key Italian markets were cancelled, without any coordination with STB. The Seychelles Tourism Industry suffered greatly from these cancelled flights. The numbers speak for themselves in those segments.
Come on guys, get a life. It saddens me to write such rubbish.
Stop Moaning and Trump Emirates
Regar and Air Seychelles are playing the same tune. They are moaning about the 7th flight Emirates will bring to Seychelles, and the 14th flight if Alain St. Ange has his way.
A Little Advise To The Mighty Air Seychelles Board
Emirates operating success is also its operating weakness. Emirates uses a hub and spoke system of flying travellers to Dubai and then it uses smaller planes to fly travellers into shorter routes. Travellers collect themselves in Dubai in a transit, then make their way to a final destination.
To out smart Emirates, all Air Seychelles needs to do is refocus on the main tourism markets in Europe, and provide direct flights for European travellers to Seychelles, cancelling the dreaded sometimes long overnight transit in Dubai. But Air Seychelles will have to coordinate its effort with a solid marketing program to win back travellers. It cannot just fly to a destination and expect travellers to jump on board because it now flies to a destination.
This is the time to coordinate efforts with St. Ange, STB, SHTA. It is sad that I have to write this, but it shows how the fiefdom strategy of management is a total failure for Seychelles. The time to end the fiefdoms is now, wherever they remain.
We Are Surrounded By Opportunities
Air Seychelles flies out of Charles De Gaulle Three (3) times a week. It can increase this frequency . It flies out of UK Three (3) times a week, but it pre-sells large percentage of seats with Air Mauritius and it can cancel that in part and focus on the Seychelles market.
Take A Deep Breath: Focus, Focus, Focus
Why is Air Seychelles flying to Mauritius so often? Air Seychelles even flies to the Falkland Islands, and I mention that, just to give you an indication on how Air Seychelles has lost focus. Our national airline cannot lose more focus then that. We all know Air Seychelles is just a one man show when it comes to bottom line decision making. It’s Board of Directors are a rubber stamp. Hence why it fails today. Michel should clean up that Board. They are menacing the success of the Tourism Industry, because they have resigned themselves to having excuses for everything that poses a challenge to them.
The infighting and back biting is more than sufficient reason to send them all packing and replace them with a serious no nonsense business oriented Board.
You don’t need to know how to fly a plane to run an airline business. You need business skills and business instinct to run a business. You can hire a pilot to fly the plane.
Refocus or Be Doomed
Air Seychelles should press to re-establish routes it closed in lucrative markets such as Frankfurt. Germany is the only EU country registering impressive 3.8% GDP and we pulled out our flight from Frankfurt. That is a bozo decision if ever I heard of one, especially when we know Germany will continue to register 3.5 % plus growth rates in the next Five (5) years.
Will Seychelles ignore this little detail regarding Germany like Air Seychelles is ignoring it?
Push to open routes in Northern Europe. Copenhagen is a hub of Northern Europe and we do not even fly there. Yet, Northern Europeans love Seychelles, and enjoy the longest holiday period in the World.
Thai Airways caught on to this and they fly directly into Oslo regularly each week and Copenhagen, cleaning up a potential tourist market that Seychelles could have easily cornered.
Let St. Ange Do His Job
Finally, Mr. St. Ange is no saint yet, as his name infers. But Mr. St. Ange is the best option Seychelles has at this point in time in marketing our destination.
Mr. St. Ange works with Government of Seychelles, and he has been appointed to STB by the SHTA, the tourism trade NGO that handles the day to day issues of Tourism Trade.
Yes the President is the Minister of Tourism, but the Trade asked for that, in order that we could face the issues that were destroying the Industry in quick time, because the Government of Seychelles had gone inept and nonresponsive to the Industries issues for too long. Regar cannot rightfully pounce on St. Ange for that.
Let St. Ange do his job!
This is the second swipe Regar has made at St. Ange in one month. The first being a critic of the Seychelles International Carnival. In both instances, I have confirmed, Regar did not even bother to reach St. Ange for a comment and the man had to resort to Nation to defend himself and his best efforts.
Such lack of respect for St. Ange and the Trade which he represents, is indicative of people that sponge off the hard work of the business community. You have all gotten use to a fat pay check being deposited into your accounts each month.

You forgot that someone had to earn that money, pay taxes, to make sure your fat cat salaries were paid. St. Ange’s strategies, under the circumstances and the reality of dealing with national bankruptcy, an IMF reform program in the face of a world financial crisis and a collapsing yield in the industry makes sense.
I will not only defend him as long as he makes sense, I will urge the dormant opposition that write in Regar to leave the man alone and let him do his job.
Did you not vote for a SCR 77 Million Budget Surplus Expenditure last week Regar-guys? Where do you think that money came from?
If St. Ange was not doing his work well, you could not have raised your hands to be fooled by Danny Faure, who rode you like a jockey on a horse.
Let me be clear for those that just woke up from a Five (5) year snooze, St. Ange is not the problem, he is trying to find solutions to the problems, while you write all sorts of mumbo-jumbo.

Sesel Pou Seselwa!
May God Bless All Freedom Loving Seychellois!