Seychelles’ tourism numbers are usually reported by calendar year, but cruise tourism is measured around the cruise season. This is because cruise companies, most of which are international operators rather than Seychellois companies, plan voyages that move between several ports across a region, with Seychelles included as one of those stops.
When a cruise ship comes into Port Victoria, that visit is known as a cruise call or port call. The cruise company brings the ship and its passengers, while Seychelles provides the port and the services needed to receive them, from immigration and customs to transport, tours and guides. There is also the local economic activity that follows when passengers leave the ship to shop, eat, go on excursions or pay for other services during their time on the island.
This is why cruise activity is discussed by season rather than simply by calendar year. A cruise season is the period covered by the cruise companies’ scheduled calls to Seychelles. So when a season ends, it does not mean cruise tourism itself has ended. It simply means the calls scheduled for that season have been completed, with the next set of calls falling into the following season.
The 2025 to 2026 cruise season began in October 2025, with 47 vessel calls on the original schedule. That number, however, did not hold. Geopolitical disruption led cruise companies to reroute ships and cancel planned port visits across several markets, and Seychelles ultimately lost six of the calls it had been expecting.
The season closed on 27 June 2026, when the MV Viking Yi Dun made the final call at Port Victoria before continuing on a repositioning voyage from Asia to the Mediterranean. The Tourism Department marked the end of the season with a ceremony at the port.
Even with those cancellations, Seychelles recorded 41 cruise ship calls during the season, up from 35 the previous season. Eight of those were maiden calls, meaning the vessels were visiting Seychelles for the first time. In other words, the country ended the season with 17 percent more cruise calls than it recorded the year before, despite losing six calls from the original schedule.
So, despite the disruption, Seychelles still ended the season with more cruise calls than the year before. But 41 calls also make you look beyond the number of ships coming into Port Victoria. Seychelles is not just counting how many ships arrive. It is also paying attention to what happens after the passengers get off the ship.
First, the numbers need separating
The 41 cruise calls recorded by Seychelles this season are part of a much smaller number than the country’s overall tourism arrivals. The two figures are also measured over different periods, so it is worth separating them before looking at what the cruise numbers actually mean.
The 41 cruise calls and eight maiden calls are for the 2025 to 2026 cruise season, which ran from October 2025 to June 2026. The figures come from the Seychelles Tourism Department.
In 2025, Seychelles welcomed 398,841 international visitors, up 13.1 percent from 2024 and the highest annual total the country has recorded. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) puts the figure at 398,840, just one visitor less. That number covers international visitors to Seychelles across the entire year.
The difference between the figures matters because they show the scale of the tourism economy Seychelles is working with. The 398,841 includes the wider tourism market, while the 41 refers to cruise ship calls. One ship call can bring hundreds or thousands of passengers, but a cruise call is not the same thing as an individual visitor arrival counted in the annual tourism statistics.
The cruise numbers are not really a story about how many more ships Seychelles can bring in. They are part of a much bigger question about how the country turns tourism traffic into economic value, because Seychelles had a 29% increase in the tourism earnings of Seychelles in 2025.
That gives us three different things to look at: the number of cruise calls, the number of international visitors and the money tourism generated. They tell us different things about the sector, and the cruise numbers make more sense when viewed against that wider picture.
Two documents, not one
The numbers become more interesting when you look at what Seychelles is putting behind them. The country has not left cruise tourism to grow simply by bringing in more ships. It now has a dedicated strategy for the sector, alongside a broader plan for tourism as a whole.
The first is the Tourism Action Plan 2026 to 2030, which Cabinet approved on 29 April 2026. It sets out the priorities for Seychelles’ wider tourism sector over the next five years.
The second is the Cruise Tourism Strategy 2026 to 2033, which was validated and formally handed over on 16 April 2026, two weeks before the Action Plan went to Cabinet. This one deals specifically with cruise tourism and sets out a seven-year direction for the sector.
That distinction matters. The cruise strategy is not simply another tourism document. It is Seychelles’ first dedicated strategy for cruise tourism, developed with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa through its Sub-Regional Office for Eastern Africa after a two-year process that began in 2024.
In practical terms, the question behind a strategy like this is bigger than how many ships Seychelles can get into Port Victoria. It is about how the country manages the sector, how much of the economic activity reaches local businesses, how cruise tourism fits into the wider tourism economy and how Seychelles can grow the sector without losing sight of what it wants from it.
And both plans were already in place before the 2025 to 2026 cruise season ended.
The timing of the strategy is worth noting. It was formally handed over on 16 April 2026, while the cruise season was still running, and it had already been in development for two years.
That work also continued through a change in government. Seychelles held its presidential and National Assembly elections in September and October 2025. Patrick Herminie won the presidential run-off with 52.7 percent, and his party won the National Assembly.
The UNECA report carrying the strategy has a foreword signed by Sylvestre Radegonde, the previous Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tourism. When the completed strategy was handed over in April, it was received by Amanda Bernstein, the new government’s Minister for Tourism and Culture.
The strategy therefore began under one government and was completed under another, without losing its place in Seychelles’ tourism plans. More importantly, it gives the country a seven-year framework for developing cruise tourism, with a focus that goes beyond simply bringing ships into Port Victoria.
Why the Action Plan exists
The Tourism Action Plan becomes more significant when you look at why it was produced in the first place.
According to the Cabinet record from State House, it followed a Tourism Assessment carried out under Seychelles’ IMF-supported economic reform programme. The assessment identified four problems: visitor growth was slowing, spending per visitor had stagnated, air connectivity had weakened, and too much of the money generated by tourism was leaking out of the local economy.
The IMF staff report adds another important detail. The tourism study and the action plan were included as a structural benchmark under the Extended Fund Facility and were originally due in September 2025. In other words, Seychelles had committed to producing them as part of its reform programme.
The recommendations were therefore aimed at specific weaknesses in the sector. They included targeting higher-value visitor segments to increase revenue without simply pursuing more volume, improving and diversifying tourism products, modernising the legal and regulatory framework, and creating more local employment through upskilling.
The assessment also looked at Seychelles’ competitive position. The country is competing with more affordable destinations such as Mauritius, Tanzania and Madagascar, alongside established destinations such as the Maldives and newer competitors including Sri Lanka.
Vice President Sebastian Pillay presented the Tourism Action Plan alongside two other reforms at a Cabinet press briefing: a Multi-Year Electricity Tariff framework and a strengthened Public Financial Management Action Plan. All three were presented as part of Seychelles’ IMF-supported reform targets.
That puts the tourism plan in a different context. State House describes the plan as this; it is intended to move tourism towards higher value rather than simply higher volume, with measures around revenue management, the protection of natural and cultural assets, and stronger links between tourism operators and local producers so that more tourism income stays in the domestic economy.
And that explains why this matters to the cruise strategy too. Cruise tourism brings its own set of questions about spending, local participation and how much of the money generated by each visit stays in Seychelles.
The Tourism Action Plan provides the wider economic direction. The Cruise Tourism Strategy sits within that direction, but focuses specifically on how cruise tourism can contribute to it.
The 2026 reality check
The picture changed in 2026. Between January and May, Seychelles received 145,858 stopover visitors, down 11.7 percent from the 165,155 recorded during the same period in 2025.
By week 27 of 2026, in early July, year-to-date arrivals stood at 171,279, compared with 198,238 at the same point in 2025. That was a 13.6 percent decline, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The decline was closely linked to disruptions in air travel following the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East. Seychelles relies heavily on flights through Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, so the closure of airspace and reduced services by Gulf airlines quickly affected access to the islands.
The IMF’s 2026 Article IV consultation, concluded by its Executive Board on 26 May 2026, puts that dependence into context. Roughly 60 percent of tourist arrivals come through those three hubs. During the affected weeks, tourist arrivals fell by an average of 32 percent year on year.
However, longer-term bookings remained steady, which IMF staff interpreted as evidence that demand for Seychelles remained strong. People still wanted to come. The problem was whether they could get there.
Air Seychelles responded by introducing temporary direct flights to Paris and Rome. But the IMF expects those routes to be temporary and notes that they could be dropped once Gulf carriers return to normal operations.
The same disruption also puts pressure on other parts of the economy. Seychelles imports about 95 percent of its energy, much of its food and most of its industrial inputs, so problems with transport routes can increase freight and shipping costs at the same time as they affect the flow of tourists.
The IMF’s economic projections show how much these disruptions could affect Seychelles. It expects the economy to grow by just 1.5 percent in 2026, compared with an estimated 5.1 percent growth in 2025 and an earlier projection of 3.3 percent for 2026. That projection assumes the disruption lasts only one month.
If the war lasts three months and oil prices remain close to US$111 a barrel, the IMF's alternative scenario puts growth at 0.9 percent. Inflation reaches 4.6 percent, the primary surplus turns into a deficit equivalent to 2 percent of GDP, and public debt rises to 63.2 percent.
The numbers also give more context to the finding in the Tourism Assessment that air connectivity had weakened. Seychelles is heavily dependent on a small number of aviation hubs, and disruptions to those routes can affect both the number of people who reach the islands and the amount they spend once they get there. Much of that disruption is outside the country’s control.
The Tourism Assessment recommended that Seychelles focus more on higher-value visitors, rather than relying mainly on increasing the number of arrivals. In practical terms, that means attracting visitors who are likely to spend more and developing tourism products and services that encourage more of that spending to happen within Seychelles.
The reason this matters becomes clearer when you look at the country’s dependence on air connectivity. Seychelles cannot control every disruption to the routes that bring visitors to its islands. If fewer people can get there, simply trying to increase arrival numbers will not always be possible.
A higher-value approach gives the country another way to grow tourism earnings: get more economic value from the visitors who do make it to Seychelles, while keeping more of that spending within the local economy.
The approach is broader than simply targeting wealthier travellers. It also means improving the experiences Seychelles offers, diversifying its tourism products, strengthening the businesses and services that support visitors, and creating stronger links between tourism operators and local producers. The aim is to increase what visitors spend while making sure more of that spending circulates within the Seychelles economy.
The evidence that fewer cruise passengers helped
The IMF staff report provides another useful piece of evidence. Cruise passenger numbers actually fell in 2025, from roughly 9,000 to about 5,000.
The IMF links that decline to some of the changes seen in the wider tourism numbers. With fewer cruise passengers and higher hotel occupancy, the average length of stay increased and spending per tourist also rose.
The change was significant. Average spending per tourist increased by 14.3 percent in 2025, while total tourism income rose by 29 percent compared with 2024. The reduction in cruise passengers was one of the factors the IMF identified as contributing to the increase in spending per tourist.
Put the cruise-call and passenger figures together and the pattern is clear: more ships, fewer passengers. Seychelles recorded 41 cruise calls in the 2025 to 2026 season, up from 35 the season before, while cruise passenger numbers fell from roughly 9,000 in 2024 to about 5,000 in 2025. That is the smaller-vessel strategy beginning to show up in the data.
The figures also help explain the value-over-volume approach. In a year when Seychelles welcomed more value from tourism, one of the contributing factors was actually a decline in a category of visitors that typically stays for a shorter period and spends differently from visitors staying in hotels.
It also helps explain the direction Seychelles has taken with cruise tourism.
During the 2025 to 2026 season, the Tourism Department prioritised smaller, premium and expedition vessels rather than focusing only on mass-market cruise traffic. The thinking is that these vessels can bring higher-value visitors while putting less pressure on infrastructure, tourism sites and the environment.
So when Seychelles talks about growing cruise tourism, more calls do not necessarily mean more large ships carrying as many passengers as possible. A smaller number of vessels that generate more value for local businesses, while putting less pressure on the islands, can fit the strategy just as well.
The choice of vessels is therefore an important part of how Seychelles is approaching cruise tourism.
The leakage problem, quantified
Of the four problems identified in the Tourism Assessment, economic leakage may be the least visible, but it is one of the most important.
The UNECA cruise analysis estimates that up to 70 percent of tourism revenue generated by the cruise sector leaves Seychelles, mainly through foreign ownership and imports. The report's glossary says that between 50 and 70 percent of cruise passenger spending leaves through global supply chains.
At the same time, the report finds that cruise tourism can make a significant economic contribution if the sector develops as projected. Between 2026 and 2033, it estimates that cruise tourism could contribute US$531 million directly to GDP. When multiplier effects are included, the figure rises to about US$1.247 billion.
The model calculates a 205 percent return on investment and a cost-benefit ratio of 3.05. Put simply, it estimates about three dollars in benefit for every dollar invested.
But the report also counts the costs.
Projected environmental costs of US$35.2 million are slightly higher than environmental benefits of US$32.9 million, leaving a net environmental loss of US$2.3 million.
The social costs are considerably larger.
Projected social costs of US$86 million exceed social benefits of US$10.8 million, producing a net social loss of US$75.2 million. The report attributes those costs to overcrowding, pressure on public services and the commercialisation of cultural practices.
The overall net benefit remains positive at US$866.6 million on an undiscounted basis.
But that number is positive because the economic benefits outweigh the environmental and social costs.
The model is essentially saying that cruise tourism can generate substantial economic benefits, but those benefits come with environmental and social costs.
Then there is the figure that matters most for the argument Seychelles is making about keeping more tourism income at home.
The sensitivity analysis estimates that a 10 percent reduction in economic leakage would increase net benefits by US$124.7 million.
That is significant because leakage is one of the things Seychelles can actually influence. It cannot control a war, an airspace closure or whether a major airline cuts a route. It can do more about how much cruise passenger spending goes to local businesses, how much is sourced locally and how much of the money generated by tourism stays in the country.
This is why keeping more tourism money in Seychelles is not simply a nice line in a strategy document.
It is the main economic argument behind the strategy.
There is a caveat, though. These are projections, not measurements of what has already happened. The model assumes average passenger spending of US$100, around 50,000 passengers annually by 2033 and a 5 percent discount rate. The report also acknowledges gaps in the available data, particularly around long-term environmental impacts.
So the figures should be read as estimates of what could happen under those assumptions, rather than precise predictions.
Sherin Francis, Principal Secretary for Tourism, was direct about the implication at the handover. She said the analysis showed that cruise tourism already makes a significant contribution, but also creates environmental and social impacts. The opportunity, she said, is to organise the sector better through stronger regulation and coordination while retaining more value within the domestic economy.
At the cruise season closing in June, she put it even more simply: success is not just about attracting more ships.
The strategy comes with a proposed investment requirement of SCR 2.32 billion. The money is expected to come through blended public funding, public-private partnerships, development partners and contributions from the industry, with investment going towards port infrastructure, environmental safeguards, better data systems and greater local participation in the cruise value chain.
So the strategy is not simply asking Seychelles to grow cruise tourism. It is trying to change what the country gets from it.
The tools already in use
Two changes show that the strategy is already beginning to shape decisions outside the policy document.
The first is the preference for certain types of cruise vessels. That was already being reflected in the 2025 to 2026 season, so it was not simply a future intention waiting for the strategy to be implemented.
The second is a change to the tourism environmental sustainability levy.
Amendments to the Environment Protection (Tourism Environmental Sustainability Levy) Regulations came into effect on 1 January 2026. Small accommodation establishments with 24 rooms or fewer are now exempt from the levy.
The levy remains SCR 75 per person per night for medium establishments with 25 to 50 rooms and SCR 100 for large establishments with more than 50 rooms, yachts and island resorts. Citizens and residents, airline and yacht crew, and children aged 12 and under remain exempt.
The government says the exemption is intended to reduce cost pressures on smaller operators and support their contribution to the tourism sector.
It is a relatively small policy change, but it has a measurable fiscal cost. The IMF estimates that the exemption will reduce government revenue by around 0.1 percent of GDP each year through 2031.
So Seychelles is choosing to leave some recurring revenue on the table in order to reduce the burden on smaller accommodation businesses. That fits with the wider direction of the tourism reforms: the focus is not only on how much tourism activity the country can generate, but also on how local businesses participate in the sector and how much of the resulting economic value stays within the country.
The precedents, and where they actually apply
Bhutan and Botswana are useful comparisons for Seychelles because both have built tourism models around getting more value from a relatively small and environmentally sensitive destination. But they do it in very different ways.
Bhutan charges a Sustainable Development Fee. It abolished its Minimum Daily Package Rate in June 2022 and increased the SDF to US$200 per person per night. It then reduced the fee to US$100 from September 2023, with that rate currently scheduled to run until 31 August 2027.
Indian nationals pay a reduced rate of 1,200 ngultrum, roughly US$15. Children aged 6 to 12 receive a 50 percent discount, while children under five are exempt. The fee is separate from accommodation, meals, guides and transport, and is paid upfront with the visa application.
Botswana takes a different approach. It uses land and capacity.
The government leases exclusive-use concessions and limits the number of beds within them. Published research on northern Botswana records most lodges in these concessions as having between 16 and 24 beds.
The scale of the model is small. A 2014 UNESCO survey counted 2,129 tourist beds across the entire Okavango Delta. In 2017, the most recent year for which published site-specific figures are available, the Delta received 52,638 visitors, including 43,363 international visitors.
The comparison with Seychelles is useful because all three destinations are dealing with the same broad question: how do you generate more economic value from tourism without putting unlimited pressure on a small and environmentally sensitive destination?
But the tools are not the same.
Bhutan influences visitor numbers through the cost of visiting. Botswana controls capacity through the number of beds available within its concessions.
Seychelles has taken a softer approach. Its tourism environmental sustainability levy ranges from roughly US$5 to US$7 per person per night depending on the size of the accommodation establishment, while its cruise policy gives preference to smaller, premium and expedition vessels.
Neither approach puts a hard ceiling on the number of visitors who can enter Seychelles.
That may be deliberate. Seychelles is already dealing with declining arrivals because of disruption to the air routes on which it depends. Adding a significant financial or capacity barrier to entry at a time when fewer people can reach the country would carry its own risks.
So when Seychelles talks about getting more value from tourism, it is not currently talking about limiting the number of people who can visit in the way Bhutan or Botswana do.
Its approach is to make the tourism it already receives more valuable: attract visitors and cruise operators that can generate more spending, strengthen local participation in the tourism economy and retain more of that money within Seychelles.
The physical case
There is a physical constraint that runs through all of this: Seychelles has very little land.
The country has a total land area of about 455 square kilometres spread across 115 islands. Mahé, the largest island, covers roughly 148 square kilometres, about one-third of the country's total land area.
The resident population is around 108,000. In 2025, Seychelles received almost four times that number of international visitors.
Then there is the ocean. Seychelles' exclusive economic zone covers about 1.37 million square kilometres.
Those numbers put the scale of the challenge into perspective. Seychelles has a vast marine territory but a very small amount of land on which to accommodate its population, tourism infrastructure and visitors.
That helps explain why the pressures identified in the UNECA analysis are concentrated around marine ecosystems, infrastructure capacity and the communities that have to accommodate tourism activity.
The IMF makes the constraint even clearer. Its staff report says that a sustainable medium-term growth path will require economic diversification "as tourism approaches environmental limits."
For Seychelles, then, the question is not simply how much tourism the country can attract. It is also how much activity its islands and ecosystems can sustain while still allowing tourism to remain an important part of the economy.
What this asks of the people selling it
The focus on getting more value from tourism also changes what Seychelles needs to promote.
This is not about wanting fewer people to know about Seychelles. The country is still actively pursuing visibility and growth in its source markets. The difference is that attracting attention is no longer enough. That attention needs to translate into longer stays, higher spending and more money reaching local businesses.
That connects directly to the problems identified in the Tourism Assessment. If spending per visitor has stagnated, then simply bringing in more visitors does not necessarily generate more value per person. If money leaks out of the economy, then even money spent by visitors may not stay in Seychelles for very long.
The type of visitor experience therefore matters. A visitor who stays longer, spends more on the islands and uses locally owned businesses creates more opportunities for tourism income to circulate within the domestic economy.
That can include locally owned guesthouses, Seychellois tour operators, community-based experiences and local producers.
Seychelles already has products and programmes that can support this approach. Tourism Seychelles has brought roughly 200 operators into its Sustainable Seychelles Programme. It has also introduced a hotel classification system with star ratings for larger properties and a separate Seychelles Secrets programme for smaller establishments.
The tourism product being promoted is also broader than the familiar sand-and-sea experience. Creole cooking, crafts, pottery and farm visits all create additional opportunities for local businesses to participate in visitor spending.
The market data shows another part of the strategy: Seychelles is not relying entirely on its traditional source markets for growth.
Germany, still the largest source market, fell 3.5 percent in 2025, while France fell 1 percent. At the same time, arrivals from Israel increased by 82.7 percent, India by 77 percent, Poland by 58.4 percent, the United States by 20.3 percent and Italy by 19.1 percent.
So while some established markets weakened, newer and smaller markets helped drive overall growth.
That diversification also matters because of the country's dependence on a small number of aviation hubs. If 60 percent of arrivals travel through Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi, then markets that can be reached through a wider range of routes become more important when those hubs are disrupted.
The first five months of 2026 show where Seychelles' visitors were coming from: Europe accounted for 72.8 percent of arrivals, Asia 15 percent and Africa 7.2 percent.
So the diversification challenge is not only about where visitors come from. It is also about how they reach Seychelles and, once they arrive, where their money goes.
What to watch
Seychelles has now put the main elements of its tourism approach in place.
Two tourism strategies have been completed. A cost-benefit analysis of cruise tourism now exists where there was not one before. The tourism environmental sustainability levy has been restructured, and the preference for smaller, premium and expedition vessels has already been reflected in practice.
The broader tourism policy also survived a change of government, giving the five-year Action Plan and seven-year Cruise Tourism Strategy some continuity beyond the administration that produced them.
The cruise strategy also places considerable emphasis on better data. That may be less visible than new infrastructure or changes to the type of ships Seychelles attracts, but it could become one of the most important parts of the plan. Without better data, it will be difficult to know whether spending per visitor is actually increasing, whether more tourism income is staying in the country or whether the environmental and social costs are changing.
Those are some of the things that will need to be watched as the strategy moves from planning to implementation.
Does spending per visitor increase, particularly when the IMF already expects it to fall by 2.3 percent in 2026?
Does the share of tourism value retained in Seychelles improve from the reported leakage level of up to 70 percent?
Will the government publish enough data for those changes to be independently assessed?
And what happens to the SCR 2.32 billion investment requirement? Will the money be mobilised, where will it come from, and how quickly will the planned investments in infrastructure, environmental safeguards, data and local participation take shape?
Those questions matter even more while connectivity remains disrupted and the IMF expects economic growth of 1.5 percent in 2026 under its baseline scenario, or 0.9 percent if the conflict lasts longer.
Seychelles is therefore not responding to a collapse in tourism. It is responding to something more complicated: a tourism sector that reached its highest annual visitor total in 2025, while also exposing weaknesses that could make continued growth harder.
The strategy was already in place before those weaknesses became more visible in the 2026 numbers.
Whether it delivers what Seychelles expects from it will take longer to establish. But the direction is already clear: the country is not abandoning tourism growth. It is trying to make the tourism it attracts generate more value, keep more of that value in Seychelles and put less pressure on the islands that support it.