The official opening of the three hotels in Bel-Ombre means a lot for their groups since they have all somehow innovated with the construction of such luxury hotels.

Indigo Hotels & Resorts – from the Food & Allied Industries Ltd are already involved in two hotels, the Suffren and the Labouronnais Waterfront. But both of them, located in Port- Louis, are more hotels for businessmen than anything else and Telfair Golf & Spa Resort gives a new tone to the group.

With Heritage Golf & Spa, Veranda Resorts can stand on a new market niche - luxury hotels – while it has concentrated on middle-range and middle-capacity hotels until now.

Finally, as the Prime Minister, Paul Bérenger, said in his speech at the inauguration of the Voile d’Or Resort & Spa, “the hotel business is very different from the bricks and mortar industry”, in which the Bhunjun & Sons group has been involved. But the experience of Philippe Requin, the business partner of the group, must have helped achieve the goal.

The PM inaugurated the three hotels. This must have been a sign that these official openings were not significant only for the owners but also for the whole country. Mauritian tourism must have opened a new page of its history with four- and five-star hotels being built in the region of Bel-Ombre. Of course, the development of such a remote and quiet place may have brought a certain number of dangers for the environment. Haven’t we heard fishermen and ecologists protest about the work to be done in the lagoon in front of the Voile d’Or?

However, in view of the tough times most of our economic pillars have had to face during the past months, the population may be reassured that an important sector is regaining strength! Slowly but surely… “A press release from the World Tourism Organisation dated 8th November last shows that, after three gloomy years, the tourism industry is on the right track again,” said the PM in his speech for the opening of the Telfair Golf & Spa Resort.

The new site in Bel-Ombre has been set up in this perspective. It is not only three brand new hotels but it is more a whole new concept. The building of such high-class hotels in a region which remains to be discovered, should attract exactly the type of tourists Mauritius has always wanted.

The era of competition in which we live makes it essential for Mauritius to find new ideas to attract more tourists than its competitors and Bel Ombre should be one of these ideas. “The goal of this IRS project in Bel-Ombre was to make of the Southern region a tourism a developed and innovating area, capable of attracting tourists in search of exoticism and a quiet environment where they can practice their favourite sports,” the PM explained at the Heritage Golf & Spa.

The three hotels are very different, which guarantees they will find their own markets. The design of Telfair follows a pure British style while the Voile d’Or is rather Moorish with an Arab touch. As for Heritage, they have opted for an African style with warm colours.

Heritage and Telfair will share some of the facilities in the South: an 18-hole golf course, the Château de Bel-Ombre that will serve French and gastronomic food and the Val Rich nature park, which has a lot of indigenous fauna and flora.

Tourists should find their feet among these new possibilities. And this is not the end of the project. Naïade Resorts and Temsa also have ideas for the region…

“The era of competition in which we live in makes it essential for Mauritius to find new ideas to attract more tourists.”