Over the past weekend articles appeared about the country’s extraordinarily beauty. One of them, entitled, ‘The Seychelles Islands: suddenly the hottest place on earth’, reports that “the world is wanting more” of Seychelles.
The reason for this popularity boom is that recently Seychelles appeared in an NBC News Today special series, broadcast every year with presenter, Matt Lauer called, Where in the World is Matt Lauer?
The breakfast show is watched every day by millions of viewers in the U.S. and millions more worldwide. In the week beginning April 21st it had 5.5. million viewers and the show finished in first place for the 646th time in a row, above its competitors ABC and CBS. It is also watched on the internet.
Over five days, Mr Lauer travels to five of the world’s most beautiful places, broadcasting live, and his viewers have to guess where he is. Until he broadcast live from Praslin recently, the location had been kept secret, and for three hours Seychelles received extensive coverage.
As a result, the number of visitors to the Seychelles Tourism Board’s www.seychelles.travel website soared to its highest level since it was launched in July 2006. On that day alone when the show was broadcast there were 9153 visitors, a significant increase from the usual figure of 2000 a day.
There were different segmen
ts on the breakfast show and these can be watched online. They are: ‘How to get to Seychelles’, ‘Gifts from Seychelles’, ‘Hopping Island to Island’, ‘Beauty of Seychelles’, ‘Kayaking in Seychelles’ and ‘Lauer tours the island nation.’Seychelles Tourism Board Chief Executive, Maurice Loustau-Lalanne was one of the guests on the live broadcast and says: “Seychelles has so much beauty that speaks for itself. The show has captured this beauty through the different personalities of Seychelles and presented it to the world from a tourism perspective.
“Publicity that would have cost us millions of dollars, we received free of charge.”
Mr Lousteau-Lalanne appears on the ‘Beauty of Seychelles’ section of the show, when he brought a coco-de-mer and a tortoise to show Mr Lauer and his global viewers.
The other guests included Nirmal Shah and Sarah Jensen, who spoke of the Seychelles environment and Creole culture, including the cuisine.
‘Tanmi Group’ gave a vibrant performance and there were schoolchildren who brought coconuts painted with the show’s logo. Three STB staff were involved in a live guessing game that had viewers from New York calling in to take part.
Seychelles was the last stop for Mr Lauer, who had previously been to Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Laos and Istanbul. The show was aired at Anse Georgette beach in front of Lemuria and can be viewed at -http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24428153/
The STB helped to prepare for the show, and a 30-man crew from NBC explored the Seychelles islands and did some pre-interviews with local people.
The NBC website also has an extended article about the history and beauty of Seychelles, the Indian Ocean and the country’s untouched sands. Already there have been positive comments posted by internet users who would like to visit or who have already visited.
The show’s destinations over the years have included the Taj Mahal in India, Mount Everest, the Great Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, South Africa and Dubai.
Seychelles was chosen last month after a three-man delegation from NBC carried out a two-day scouting mission to choose the best location from which to air the show.
Mr Lauer and his crew have now left Seychelles to go back to the Rockefeller Center in New York, where the NBC studio is based. He returns with a coco-de-mer presented to him by the STB as a souvenir of his experience.
(Courtesy: Seychelles Nation – Tuesday May 13th, 2008)
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