Photo courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions
Sven-Olof Lindblad, founder and CEO of Lindblad Expeditions has been named cultural ambassador of the Seychelles Islands by the Seychelles Ministry of Tourism. The official appointment was made by Alain St. Ange, the Seychelles minister of tourism and culture, at the home of Sir James Mancham, the founding president of the Republic of the Seychelles.
The Lindblad family has a historical relationship with the Seychelles. Sven's father Lars-Eric Lindblad started taking tourists to the Indian Ocean islands on his expedition ship in the 1960s and helped to build a tourism industry there even before there was an international airport in the islands.
Lindblad Expeditions, the company of Sven-Olof Lindblad, is now operating a series of expeditions to the Seychelles on its 102-passenger ship National Geographic Orion.
After Lindblad's appointment, he was joined by Sir James Mancham on the Orion for a trip to the Aldabra archipelago, a World Heritage Site in the Seychelles.
Lars-Eric Lindblad, with his company Lindblad Travel, was one of the very first to take tourists to many exotic destinations, including Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island, China and the Seychelles.
Born in Sweden, Lars-Eric Lindblad came to the U.S. in the 1950s, and the travel industry he found there was far too dull for him.
In his memoir, "Passport to Anywhere," he wrote, "The tours of the '50s were concentrating only on a tired handful of countries... Europe was swarming with tourists who were being crowded into a few beautiful and historic spots. Tourist overkill was subjecting small and vulnerable areas to thoughtless destruction: hotels, cheap trinket shops, and parking lots were taking over the scene. Tour operators were not exercising their inventiveness."
Lindblad would change that.
Sven-Olof Lindblad did some traveling with his father and worked for his father's company. In the late 1970s he started his own company, called Special Expeditions. Lindblad Travel closed in 1989. Lars-Eric died in 1994. In 2000, Sven renamed his company Lindblad Expeditions.
In 2004, Lindblad Expeditions entered into a co-branding and collaborative partnership with the National Geographic Society.
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