Now Mauritius Wants the Big Fat Indian Weddings

Chennai: With destination weddings catching up among rich Indian families, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius – home to a sizable Indian diaspora – is targeting this segment, a senior official said.

“We have started talking to wedding planners in India. We took a group of wedding planners from here to Mauritius and plan to take another group soon to showcase what Mauritius offers,” Vijaye Haulder, deputy director of Mauritius Tourism Development Authority, told IANS.

Haulder, whose forefathers hailed from West Bengal and settled in Mauritius, was in India to conduct road shows in four Indian cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. He said Indian wedding planners would also be given handsome incentives to bring meetings, conferences and exhibitions to Mauritius.

Pictures: bridesmaid dresses

“Duty free liquor is also offered,” he added.

Mauritius is a well-known wedding destination for European celebrities and sportspersons.

“In the case of Europeans or other nationalities, the wedding group would be not more than 10-15 people. In many cases only the to-be-married couple would come here. But Indian weddings are different,” Haulder said.

He said the size of Indian wedding groups coming to Mauritius ranges between 350 and 800. Such a large size bodes well for Air Mauritius – the sole airline flying direct to Mauritius out of India – and the hotels and other tourist operators there.

Haulder said around 8-10 Indian weddings are now being held in Mauritius each year. According to him, around 10 celebrity weddings also take place in Mauritius. The celebrities come from varied fields – movie actors (China, Japan, Hollywood), football players and others.

Queried about promoting such weddings among Indian celebrities, he said: “We are open. We can have it free of cost. It would be a brand-building exercise for us among Indians.”

“It is not only marriages, even engagement ceremonies and pre-engagement photography is being done in Mauritius by Indians,” said Medha Sampat, founder, Knack Marketing, a travel marketing and representative company in Mumbai.

The company is the India representative for Sun Resorts Ltd., which runs star-rated hotels in Mauritius.

Mauritius Tourism also hopes to attract around 60,000 Indians to Mauritius this year, up from around 58,000 people who travelled there last year. According to Haulder, the island nation is confident of attracting more than one million tourists this year, up from over 900,000 who visited in 2013.

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