Air Seychelles has today announced the commencement of a new service linking the Seychelles and Israel’s largest metropolitan area, Tel Aviv effective 27 November 2019.
This new flight is a unique addition for an island nation that considers everyone a friend and got away with tourist visas.
The current African Tourism Board president Alain St. Ange had played an important historical role in creating tourism from Israel to Seychelles. As the former Minister of Tourism from 2012-2016, he headed the first-ever tourism delegation of hoteliers and DMCs from Seychelles to Israel and created a breakthrough in establishing seasonal direct flights. During his historic mission, St Ange also met with leading Israeli leaders including the late Israel President Shimon Peres.
The airline is represented in Israel by Dov Kahlmann, CEO of Pita Tourism Marketing. Kahlmann is also the representative of the African Tourism Board in Israel and spoke at the ATB official launch during the World Travel Market in Cape Town about the potential of the Israel outbound market for the African continent.
“We are very proud to have been nominated as the marketing & PR consultancy agency of Air Seychelles in Israel”, says Dov Kalmann. The new direct flights by Air Seychelles connecting African tourism destinations with the boosting Israeli outbound market is another proof of the potential of Israeli tourism towards Africa.
The new service will be operated on Wednesday evenings from Seychelles with the returning flight departing Tel Aviv a week later. The flight has been carefully timed to provide business and leisure traveler’s convenient connections over Seychelles to Mauritius, Johannesburg, and Mumbai.
The 6 hour and 20 minutes flight will be operated by the airlines’ new Airbus A320neo aircraft ‘Veuve, S7-VEV’ of 12 Business Class and 156 Economy Class seats scheduled to be delivered by the end of July, featuring the new inflight entertainment platform SeyStream that will allow free wireless downloads of movies and TV shows on guests personal devices.
Located in the Mediterranean coast, Tel Aviv is known for its thriving metropolis with vibrant shopping and nightlife experience. At the same time, Jerusalem located nearby is famous for its life-changing pilgrimage tours around the Holy Land.
For those planning to extend their holidays or business trips to other destinations, flight connections from Tel Aviv provide the most direct and fastest ways to reach Europe or even the United States from Seychelles.
The national airline will also be adding EL AL Airlines to its list of interline partners as part of its network expansion to provide onward connections to over 20 destinations across Europe via the Ben Gurion International Airport.
Michael Berlouis, Chief Financial Officer of Air Seychelles said: “The creation of the first ever air corridor between the Seychelles and Tel Aviv will strengthen business, tourism and cultural ties between the two countries in addition to boosting traffic and onward connections to other destinations across our network.
“We have taken a very cautious approach by partnering with tour operators in Tel Aviv to secure the majority of seats to be sold from Tel Aviv as one or two weeks packaged holidays in the Seychelles and Mauritius to ensure we guarantee the profitability of the year round business.
“Seychelles is considered as a safe and secure destination for Israeli’s hence the once per week service will enable us to open up the Seychelles market, evaluate and develop the destination further in addition to exploring the possibility of even introducing the second Airbus A320neo on the route if need be as Tel Aviv has a high GPD per capita.”
“We are also expecting to gain significant volumes of traffic from the European market once we have established the agreement with El Al Airlines of which we are working closely with at the moment.”
Air Seychelles is a network partner with the UAE national Airline Etihad. Several years ago Israel was not even listed on the Etihad inflight map. For Air Seychelles prominently adding Tel Aviv can be seen as a giant step forward in many aspects.
