When I first joined Air Mauritius (MK) on a part time basis, I requested H.O. to supply me with Area of Sale statistics. They replied that they did not have such stats.
When my tenure was made a permanent one, I pressed H.O. for the A.O.S stats. I was told that since the bulk of MK’s traffic consisted on Inclusive Tours and Incentive Travel, they had not felt the need for such figures, but promised to initiate work on this document.
I spoke with Dhiraj Jesseeramsingh, the Mauritius Ambassador in Washington, D.C, whom I had got to know when he and I had accompanied the Prime Minister to Seattle. He told me that there was a small population of Mauritians in the D.C. area who worked at the World Bank and the I.M.F.
I met the in-house Travel Agents at both of these institutions and learnt that in fact, there was a small number of Mauritian employees who did travel to MRU on their annual leave but in the majority of cases, used BA as their preferred carrier. The World Bank and IMF paid their Business Class fares and BA upgraded them using the Frequent Flyer miles that they had accumulated.
I approached Suresh Seegobin, our C.D. and got his approval to upgrade them to First Class on the LON-MRU and PAR-MRU sectors. With this incentive, we are able to get a fair share of this small hi-yield market.
The rest of the USA had very few Mauritians but the word did get around and we started getting calls from places like Wichita, KS and Los Angeles, CA and managed to get a loyal following, though at highly discounted net fares.
Canada, however, offered a different market as there were between 5,000 and 10,000 Mauritian families in Quebec and Ontario - the exact number differed depending who you talked to. Fortunately, we now had a Sales office in Toronto and George Papamoros did considerable leg work and soon we were getting these Mauritians to use our Europe - MRU flights.
Air Canada were quite difficult when we approached them for special trans-Atlantic prorates, but we got around this problem by tie-ing up with Wardair.
I then contacted the Jeremy Pask who ran the Mauritius Tourist Office in New York. I learnt that they did absolutely no advertising and only answered telephone or written requests for information on Mauritius. They did, however, hold some tourism literature, which they offered to share with us.
Soon after we opened our office in NYC, the Mauritian Ambassador in Washington called a meeting with Pask and myself at which he asked for information on our promotional efforts. He asked both of us to advise the budgets that we had for such promotion. I indicated the figure that we had, but Pask refused to divulge his figures. Additionally, he had no statistics to indicate the number of enquiries his office had received.
I thought his attitude to be very peculiar and going behind his back, was able to learn that he did have a fair amount of money allocated by the Tourist Department. I then made a few anonymous calls to his office asking for information on Scuba Diving and was very surprised to hear his staff recommending Belize as a destination for such a sport.
I mentioned this to our CMD who must have taken up the issue with the Director General of Tourism in MRU as I received a very irate call from Pask. I countered by asking him to prove what exactly he did to promote Mauritius as I had not seen any evidence. He mentioned that he attended Trade Shows, but when I asked for details, his answer was very vague.
It was later that I learnt from a confidential source that indeed, he did have a fair amount budgeted but that this amount was “shared” with the DG - Tourism. I guess he found that his secret had been discovered because he came to my office and asked if he could join MK in attending Trade Shows; he would be willing to share the costs equally.
Pask stated to me that there was no Tour Operator who promoted Mauritius as a stand alone destination. We agreed that the only way to sell MRU was as a joint destination. I then contacted a few T.O.s who promoted South Africa and East Africa and tried to get them to show MRU as an extension. I was successful in getting two T.O.s, one of whom (African Travel) agreed to devote two full pages to MRU in his brochure.
I attended the annual meetings of the U.S. Tour Operators Association (USTOA) and soon realized that I could use my limited budget more effectively by speaking directly with the 2 or 3 African Tour Operators. Even then, our efforts did not meet with much success.
I mentioned this to our CMD who said - Inder, why don’t you become a Tour Operator yourself and promote MRU? And that was the start of my second career as a Tour Operator in addition to being the head of the MK offices in North America.
Indian Ocean Enterprises, Inc. came into being with the primary purpose of promoting tours to islands of the Indian Ocean. Having by then a fair knowledge of what Mauritius had to offer, I did a great amount of travel to learn about other countries in the Indian Ocean - Seychelles, Madagascar, Moroni, Rodrigues and additionally, South Africa, where I attended two annual meetings of their local Ground Operators and Travel Agents (INDABA).
In the course of the next full year, I had tied up with Ground Operators in each country and personally stayed at hotels and resorts which we would promote and negotiated special hotel rates.
Air Mauritius gave me a special budget to cover the cost of brochures and advertising and I listed the support of Bob Desley, our Advt. and P.R. Consultant in getting our promotion off the ground.
Our brochure had tours to Mauritius and combinations - MRU/SEZ, MRU/Madagascar and MRU/South Africa. In the same brochure, we promoted Honeymoon packages, Scuba and Snorkeling and Deep Sea Fishing. I will talk of the latter (Fishing) in greater detail in a future Post.
In late 1989, we had a formal opening of our office at the Roosevelt Hotel in mid-town Manhattan. Sir Harry Tiruvengadam, our CMD was attending the IATA AGM in Montreal and came down for the opening. The ribbon was cut and a Sterling Silver memento was presented to him to commemorate the occasions.
My memory of this occasion also brought forward another very pleasant thought. I received a call from my very dear friend - Yash Johar - who called from Singapore. His opening words were “Brother, how are you”. He had always addressed me by that monicker. Yash was going to Mauritius to do a site inspection for a movie that he wanted to produce. He needed two things - one, a room at our finest hotel, The Royal Palm and two, a seat on a flight from MRU to BOM at the end of his visit.
I made a few calls and took care of his requirements. He did produce the movie - Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - which was shot in India, Mauritius and Scotland. It was also the debut of his son, Karan Johar as a Director. Yash gave me a DVD of the movie when he next visited NYC.
The last movie that Yash produced was Kal Ho Na Ho and it was partly shot in NYC. Yash asked me to advise him some suitable locations and I was happy to assist. It was during this visit that he discovered that he had cancer of the esophagus. The movie was released in 2003 and he passed away the next year. Manju and I were fortunate enough to spend some time with him and his wife, Hiroo, in their apartment in Mumbai, just before he left us. I miss him; Yash was a very dear friend.
