Mauritius sees record tourists in 2007

Expects Indian airliners to set up base there

PORT LOUIS: Mauritius will attract a record 900,000 visitors this year, up from 788,276 in 2006, thanks to liberalised air access, marketing and reputation, the tourism minister said.

“We do not need to work any more on our reputation. We are attracting tourists from all over the world,” Xavier-Luc Duval told monthly Indian Ocean business magazine L’Eco Austral.

Mauritius aims to receive two million tourists by 2015. Duval noted potential and growing markets in Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Australia, the Middle East, and Western Europe.

But he added that some constraints for the Indian Ocean island nation were its limited hotel and airport capacity. Mauritius’ strategy to liberalise its air access has led to the arrival of new airlines such as Corsair, Comair, Eurofly, and — in the near future — Virgin and Qatar Airways, Duval said.

“We would also like to see the arrival of an Indian company, even if it’s not Air India, which does not have an available plane,” he said in the interview.

To handle the increasing number of flight arrivals, Mauritius was studying the possibilities of either upgrading the current airport terminal, or building a new one, Duval said.

“We need to double the number of hotel rooms,” he added.

Experts caution that boosting Mauritius’ tourism will require careful management of the environment, infrastructure such as water supply, and social tensions caused by competition for space in the densely populated island nation. In the year to June 2007, Mauritian tourism earned $1.2 billion, according to Central Bank data.