Abstract

Destination marketing plays an essential role for developing and preserving a location’s popularity, and consequently it enhances sustained destination competitiveness. Overall, destinations use a combination of marketing communication tools to support their strategies in order to alter themselves from others. Such marketing strategies has been an effective mean in trying to attract and increase visitor numbers, and maintain stays within destinations. This paper is set in the context of small island destinations, focusing on the Seychelles Archipelago. Innovation in communication channels has improved marketing efficiency of small island developing states. However, these destinations face particular challenges when seeking to compete in the global market. Destination marketers have to proactively shape, adapt to, and inertly struggle through changes in customer preferences, fierce competitions, and technological progress. More recently, the prevailing global economic crisis has worsened these challenges when competing on the international market. This descriptive research attempts to provide an analytical insight into destination marketing activities in the Seychelles. The biggest challenge for such economies lies in the pooling of resources especially as they face pressure on already limited funds. Consequently, the study focuses on reviewing destination marketing activities and tools utilized in the Seychelles and measuring their effectiveness from both destination marketers’ and visitors’ perspectives. Primary data used were gathered using a survey based approach through self-administered questionnaires. The findings of the study revealed that although the marketing campaigns in Seychelles have proven to be relatively effective, marketers cannot neglect the minority of visitors who did not share the same opinion. Recommendation is thus made to continuously conduct market research so as to keep pace with the different needs and changing expectations of the targeted markets, and to adopt and implement strategic solutions to sustain positive arrival growth and customer satisfaction.