Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework

Client:

The Tourism Department within the Seychelles Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tourism.

The challenge:

The Seychelles Tourism Department was seeking support with the development of an overarching framework for the planning, development, promotion, and monitoring of the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainable tourism in Seychelles.

The project’s key objectives were as follows:

• Build a shared understanding and commitment to create a better type of tourism for the Seychelles.
• Establish a framework that provides a clear and shared vision, and provides policies and actions needed to transform tourism to make it more resilient, prosperous and inclusive of communities of the Seychelles.
• Develop guiding tools as well as establish a monitoring, evaluation and learning framework to facilitate progress towards achieving sustainable tourism and strengthen the capacity of stakeholders in managing the impact of tourism development in Seychelles.

TEAM Tourism Consulting and TRC Tourism were appointed to carry out this assignment. The project team consisted of TRC’s Penny Spoelder (Project Manager), supported by three TEAM consultants: Dr Anna Spenceley, Issa Torres and Rossetta Alcindor:

• Penny Spoelder (TRC Tourism – Team Leader), a sustainable tourism expert with more than 30 years’ experience as both a consultant and practitioner, working in tourism planning, destination development and project delivery.
• Dr Anna Spenceley (TEAM – Strategic Advisor), an international expert in sustainable and responsible tourism, with a particular focus on biodiversity, conservation and protected areas. She has a thorough knowledge of Seychelles and has written many reports on its tourism sector, with particular regard to sustainability and conservation, since 2005.
• Issa Torres (TEAM – Sustainable Tourism Consultant), with more than 12 years’ experience across 20+ countries in the fields of sustainable tourism, protected areas, coastal tourism, cultural heritage, ecotourism, marketing and hospitality skills development.
• Rossetta Alcindor (appointed by TEAM as local consultant and anchor), based in Mahé, with  broad experience working with local civil society organisations specialised particularly in sustainable tourism, (food & plastic) waste management, and climate adaptation/mitigation.

Services provided:

TRC Tourism has developed a seven-phase co-design framework, which was used as the basis for the methodology to develop the Policy Framework, including Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning:

• Phase 1 – Shared Intent: including inception meeting and submission of project work plan and stakeholder engagement plan.
• Phase 2 – Framing the Challenge: Literature review and preparation of material to support stakeholder consultation.
• Phase 3 – Sensemaking (Round 1 Consultation): Round 1 engagement activities, establishment of project specific online engagement platform (Social Pinpoint) content to support information sharing and ongoing engagement with stakeholders, and Situation Analysis Report.
• Phase 4 – Ideate and Innovate (Round 2 Consultation): Development of presentation material based on the Situation Analysis Report to support Round 2 engagement activity; Round 2 engagement activities; Consolidation of workshop feedback.
• Phase 5 – Presentation of Draft Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework and Monitoring, Evaluation and learning Framework: Second draft of the Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework with outcomes of Workshop 2 and Draft of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework.
• Phase 6 – Finalisation of Draft: Finalise Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework
• Phase 7 – Framework Endorsement: Final report supplied to client in agreed formats and supply of all project-relating information to support project closure and endorsement by the client.

Outputs:

The project deliverables include:

• Methodology and work plan for the development of the Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework and its Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework (November 2023)
• Extensive review of existing strategies and studies to obtain data and information required for preparation of the STPF and the MELF (November 2023 – February 2024)
• Draft Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework and draft Evaluation and Learning Framework (March – May 2024)
• Final Report: Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework incorporating Evaluation and Learning Framework (June 2024).

The Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Policy Framework is due to be presented and validated in May 2024.

Image: Photo by Alessandro Russo on Unsplash