Your thoughts about Mauritius Shopping Fiesta & Carnaval de Flic en Flac?

First, the use of the dodo in the logo as mascot appears to go against the concept of “Mauritius, c’est un plaisir”, which ditched it in favour of (so-called) post-2k graphics.

Now, we hear about this carnival some weeks after RadioPlus extended its coverage of the Indian Ocean games in order to speak enthusiastically about Seychelles carnival: my take is that it’s that coincidence of IO games with the proximity of the Seychelles carnival that prompted Dodoland to copy-paste the concept. For having been there, I can assure you that Seychelles organisation and infrastructure is light-years ahead of Dodoland.

I’m almost sure that Mauritians having been there for the first time must have been shocked by the level of advancement and professionalism of those whom common folks here discard as Dallons. No, dear people, Dallons are much better at organising things professionally. See, their hotel industry cannot suffer from international “shocks” because they aim at the high-end, recession-proof niche markets, have very long already diversified their source of tourists to Russian and other African/Asian multi-billionaires (not simple millionaires as our hotels do) and do not keep complaining about a “strong” rupee…

This fiesta masacarade has been hastily botched and has forgotten to bring on board one key player: the small operators of the tourism industry: if the big players had cared to nurture the smaller operators by keeping in their books and merely suggested lower-cost alternatives for tourists with tight budgets, the long-term effect may have been that these tourists would have remembered having been able to land in Mauritius and enjoy the climate without being ripped off while keeping all local operators in business. But their aggressive “all-in” packages have limited both the number of arrivals from cash-strapped middle-class tourists from Europe, and forcing small local operators out of business. Nice…

So, now you want to set up a shopping fiesta for local Mauritians by involving only big players who prefer Euros than our Rupee, who open their doors to us only when the going gets rough, who have since long excluded themselves from involvement in local culture by proposing the all-in packages and now forgetting the small players for no apparent reason…?

But, dear people, how will you ever get customer recognition if you fail to educate your local people into the finer things? All this brings me to say that the fiesta is liekly to be boycotted by the small players and the local people will frightened off by the high prices being practised by those who are involved in the fiesta.

Eh, by the way: that carnival will be run during the day or at night-time?

Either way, even if the logistics (of transportation, security, food and other things normally considered negligible here) are decently prepared, HOW DO YOU GET THE DODOLAND PEOPLE TO ATTEND DESPITE THE FREEZING COLD OF THESE DAYS???

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