Vanilla Islands Organisation, which represents Comores, Madagascar, Maldives, Maurice, Mayotte, Réunion, Seychelles, is attending travel exhibitions in order to increase visibility that will lead to more bookings for the member states.
Vanilla Islands Organisation recently participated ITB-Berlin held in Germany which is the second largest market with 9.2% of all international arrivals. France (30.4 % of all international arrivals) is the primary source market for the majority of the Vanilla Islands of the Indian Ocean.
Following a slight decrease of 3% in 2013, the early trends for 2014 are very encouraging: arrivals for January and February 2014 have recorded a net progression of over 5% over the same period last year. The tendency is very much on the rise as the booking orders for arrivals between March and December 2014 has a global upward trend of over 20% for the majority of the Vanilla Islands member states.
Three main islands are leading this growth trend namely Mauritius (+34%), Maldives (+19%) and Seychelles (+11%). La Réunion is also registering and interesting progressive growth trend (+2%).
These trends emanate from a series of research and facts collected by a company called Forwardkeys on the major worldwide reservations systems. These figures represent slightly more than 50% of tourism arrivals and therefore a very good indicator of the forward trends for 2014.