(Seychelles News Agency) - One hundred taxis featuring pictures of Seychelles' beautiful beaches are driving around the greatest cities in Italy to capture the attention of potential holidaymakers, Tourism Seychelles said on Tuesday.

Tourism Seychelles said that this is a strategic effort in collaboration with 10 top Italian tour operators to raise awareness of the island nation as a destination at the Milan Fashion Week from February 22-28.

Pictures of Seychelles' pristine beaches are not only on the outside of the taxis but also inside to present a special touch for passengers as well as printed on tax receipts to make the journey an unforgettable one.

The Tourism Seychelles representative in Italy, Danielle Di Gianvito said that the partnership with the tour operator is to make Seychelles more visible as potential visitors start planning their spring and summer holidays.

"In a year of great challenges for the tourism sector, and especially after being added to the Italian Green List recently, we felt that Milan taxis were the perfect opportunity to increase destination awareness and thus, a great match to the co-branding campaigns already in place with our main partners and stakeholders in Italy," she said.

She added that it was "critical that we included a call-to-action approach, so we teamed up with the tour operators active on the destination to include a QR Code on the interior design. This will also allow us to measure the impact of the campaign and hopefully generate short and medium-term bookings."

Di Gianvito said that the Italian partners are thrilled to be part of the campaign and that the sales reports show an increased interest in the destination.

Seychelles is one of the destinations that Italy gave the green light for Italians to travel to last year without the need for quarantine when they return.

Last week, the Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi announced that the COVID state of emergency currently in place will end on March 31.

Figures from the tourism department for the beginning of the year showed that the Italian market is quickly picking up and up to week 6 of 2022, Seychelles has welcomed 745 Italian visitors.

Italy was among the leading tourism markets for Seychelles and was the fourth top source market in 2019 with 27,289 visitors before the COVID-19 pandemic. The figures dropped to 2,884 in 2020 when travel restrictions were imposed globally to curb the spread of the virus. The figures rose slightly to 3,313 in 2021.