Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
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Tarika Ahuja
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Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA) is focusing more on the MICE, wedding and golf segment in India this year to increase their numbers to Mauritius. Tarika Ahuja, general manager – destination marketing, TRAC Representations India stated, “MICE is not a new market for Mauritius from India. We have had some groups in the past and we have been having regular groups also, their size starts from 25 to big groups of 600 pax as well. Since Mauritius has the infrastructure and facilities, we thought of focusing more on Mauritius as a MICE destination. Currently the leisure segment especially the family and wedding segment is coming into Mauritius whereas earlier it used to be only the honeymooning segment.”
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Vijaye Haulder
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As for golf tourism, MTPA is targeting Indian golfers directly to market Mauritius as a golf destination as it boasts of 18 hole nine golf courses and nine hole two golf courses. “We have a lot of people interested in golf and hopefully the numbers will grow. We have had 100,000 amateur and professional golfers coming in to Mauritius from everywhere,” stated Vijaye Haulder, deputy director, MTPA. Adding to this, Ahuja stated, “Mauritius is a well known golf destination. We have a lot of international tournaments coming to Mauritius every year. Even in December, we have golf tournaments happening. We are not new to golf but we are trying to make Indians more aware now because golf is a good market in India and we have a lot of golfers in India.”
With this increased focus on golf tourism, wedding and MICE segment, MTPA hopes to boost the growth in the number of Indian travellers visiting Mauritius. “Till September the increase was about 7.2 per cent in Indian travellers visiting Mauritius and we hope to keep the percentage up but the problem is that we don’t have adequate capacity in direct flights. But by next year we hope to grow by 10 per cent,” revealed Haulder.
