By Rajan Narayan
SOCIAL media is wrong in portraying Goa Tourism of Goa as terminally ill. The Goa government and particularly Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte is wrong in claiming that everything is fine with tourism in Goa. The truth is that tourism in Goa is sick, but not terminally ill. There is no point in burying our heads in the sand and pretending everything is fine or hunky dory. We have to accept the symptoms of the sickness that ails tourism so that we can treat it.
Let us start with the problem of getting to Goa. It costs anything from Rs6,000 to Rs15,000 one way to get to Goa during the peak of the peak season which is Christmas to New Year. Even as of today the return airfare is Rs10,000 plus particularly on holidays and weekends. But getting to Goa is only the least of the problems. When you reach Goa you will need to take a taxi from Mopa or Manohar Parrikar Airport in north Goa or Dabolim Airport in south Goa to hotel accommodation booked.
A private taxi from Mopa to a resort in south Goa or from Dabolim to a north Goa resort could cost around Rs3,000 one round way. Which means Rs6,000 – equivalent to the one-way return air ticket. The hotel tariff in the super luxury five-star hotels can go up to Rs40,000- Rs50,000 during the peak of the peak season. This is only for room. Refreshments of food, snacks, beverages alcoholic or non-alcoholic are add-on extras. If you add up airfare, accommodation and taxi transportation it will likely add up to more than Rs2 lakh plus, plus for a week’s stay in a five-star resort in Goa. Even the three and four-star resorts increase their room tariff to Rs10,000 plus during the Christmas to New Year season.
BETTER COMPETITION
FORGET about Christmas and New Year, even during the Diwali weekend room tariffs were Rs25,000 plus. A media colleague of ours spent a week in Bali, Indonesia for a total of Rs1,65,000. Similarly, locations in Bangkok and Malaysia are much cheaper than a Goan holiday. Interestingly, Goans themselves prefer to go to Malaysia, Thailand Vietnam, Indonesia for happy holidays. These countries have their ground infrastructure in place with happy locals offering them smiles all around.
COMING to Goa once upon a time the coastal beaches were clean and breathtakingly virgin as so described and worth walking up and down during beach holidays. In the 1980s when I came to Goa there were no hoards of domestic Indian tourists on the beaches. According to Ricardo D’Souza, partner of famous Baga Titos nightclub, there has been a 60% drop in charter tourists to Goa. Though charter tourism has revived the numbers are at less than two million and far below the peak traffic of ten million plus.
Charter tourists from the UK and Russia primarily to bask in the seaside ambience of sun, sand and sea in peace. Most charter tourists are from the middle class families. They do not eat in their package booked hotels or resorts but spend the whole day by the in house swimming pool or the nearest beach. They are the ones who patronize the beach shacks. Most of the tourists from abroad are getting increasingly irritated or annoyed because of the harassment they’re subjected to over and over again by domestic tourists seeking to be photographed or “selfied” now on the beaches. Most will seek selfies with foreign tourists in bikinis or micro mini swimwear. So that they can go back to their homes in Jalandhar or Benaras and show themselves off with the Bhopal and boast that he had scored with foreign friends they made in Goa.
BEACH ANNOYANCES
THE sun-bathing foreigners are also pestered by assorted hawkers and vendors with a sarongs, costume jewelry, offering massages in various oils, there are the tattoo artistes. It would be hard to relax on the sunny beach sands for peaceful minutes without being solicited by sundry sellers of this, that or the other. Baga to Calangute to Candolim and all the way up the contiguous beaches up to the Taj Aguada resort…some vendors may be welcome if they bring fruit and cut it for you on the spot to enjoy, say pineapples or tender coconut or even water melons, bananas, etc.
However, with the domestic tourists they have an nasty habit of carting a crate of beer bottles with them so that they can settle down somewhere on the sand and enjoy their beer and whatever snacks they have purchased earlier. The empty bottles are oftentimes dumped on the beach where they get washed up in broken glass in the sand…you may no longer walk barefoot down a beach as in the old days of the 1970s while doing a beach holiday in Goa.
Our so-called patrolling tourist police do little to stop tourists from behaving like “junglies” on the beach. The richer lot of domestic tourists even break the rules and come down to the beach in their hired SUVs to race on the beaches. They will also do this and go swimming in the sea with beer bottles in hand or drive in drunken jubilation highs.
GOA’S OTHER ATTRACTIONS
GOA claims to have a number of other attractions like water sports, including paragliding, parasailing, deep sea diving, snorkeling, island hopping, inland water boating to see birds and crocodiles sunning themselves on river banks… unfortunately, most of the water sports activities are not conducted by professionals.
We are always shocked to see tourists being taken for boat rides to chase dolphins or look for crocodiles in the inland waterways of Goa. Goa offers scuba diving but what are the safety precautions and quick life-saving measures in place for emergencies in more remote holiday sites? We remember a domestic tourist dying soon after he went scuba diving. Goa also has a facility of bungee jumping. How safe is it?
The tourism department may not like it but the truth is that there are not many takers for spice farm visits or heritage tourism. This is because most of these trips are indifferently organized. Take the fact that in recent times and at the end of their patience the residents Latin quarters heritage district of Fontainhas – residents lodge complaints of annoying domestic tourists who drink and misbehave against the walls and gardens plots of their homes. Other countries do a much better job of promoting heritage tourism.
We remember the Latin quarters in Havana, Cuba, for instance which is a charming shopping district for traditional Cuban temptations like coffee, rum, local textiles and handicrafts. Again, the colleague who returned from Bali in Indonesia says she was impressed with the infrastructure created for traditional and natural tourism attraction. In Bali, she shares, they don’t chase away monkeys but create a monkey park where tourists can interact with their four-legged “ancestors” of old.
COME TO GOA TO EAT!
ADMITTEDLY, Goa has become an attractive, famous fine dining or eating destination. Reportedly, Goa has amongst the best and most diversified eateries and restaurants in the country. You may find any cuisine from Italian to Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Spanish and from India pure Punjabi or Naga or Bengali; of course Goan fish thali presentations and seafood do supremely well but the competition is tough. Both Western and Eastern as well as Indian cuisines do well in Goa.
Goa also has a number of very good nightclubs. Unfortunately, these not promoted or advertised. Goa is unique in that live bands and music are in many restaurants, this is in contrast to the deafening trance music of some nightclubs of Anjuna and Vagator.
Does the Tourism Department promote the tradition of live band music in Goa with any grace? Or the local community dances with fado being the most exotic in Goa? Indeed, Goan tiatr too may be promoted as a major tourist attraction with some skilling in presentation in place.
We think the problems afflicting tourism in Goa can be solved. Start with taking a look at the airfares. They cannot keep going up at the drop of an excuse or increase demand. A 25-50 % premium is understood. But not a 100%-200% increase. Similarly, there should be a limit to hotel industry’s greed, particularly that of the five-star hotels. It is absurd to charge Rs40,000-Rs50,000 for a single night tariff during the peak of the peak season. Considering the hiking of hotel tariff on the eve of New Year, it may be cheaper to go on a space trip to the moon.
And there is no question that that the tourist taxi mafia needs to be checked and controlled. It is absurd that the top holiday destination in the country should not have a metered public taxi services the moment anyone steps out on the street. At present it’s like even if you have your own car you may not drop a tourist guest with you to his hotel. Taxi mafia outside various top hotels keep an eye on tourists going and out of the resort with an eagle eye to note what’s okay and what’s not okay with them.
GOA MILES DECENT
WE have found Goa Miles definitely more economical and safer while the private cabbie will demand Rs1,000 to take me from Caranzalem in Panaji to the Treetop by Hilton at the Kadamba Plateau which all part of Panjim itself. Goa Miles tariff quoted is less than Rs500. But alas, even Goa Miles is more expensive compared to easily available Uber and Ola taxis in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Bengaluru has introduced Ola auto-rickshaws which are much more economical and which many locals prefer to cabs for short distances. Local transport costs which are now getting to be higher than even airfares have to come down rationally. Tourists cannot be held to ransom if there’s going to be any improvement in tourism in Goa.
Another thing. Whether we like it or not the casinos have become the biggest attraction for domestic tourists. Unlike traditional tourist attractions like beach holidays and Christmas and New Year gala events, the casinos attract tourists all the year around. They also provide regular business for the starred hotels since regular gamblers are given free hotel accommodation if they’re casino goers. It would be desirable to move the casinos out of the Mandovi River though as in the river they only create traffic congestion in capital city Panaji.
CONCLUSION
FINALLY, we are inviting tourists to come to Goa, not to the moon. The least we can do is to offer them better road conditions which are neither badly potholed or badly patched up. Travelling in Panaji has increasingly become a nightmare. The approach roads to all our beaches also exhibit craters as big as on the moon. This makes for dangerous roads and accident prone roads and the statistics are to be ashamed about.
In several places even the grand highways are collapsing. Add to this the problem of drivers under the influence of liquor or drunken driving. Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte should pursue his colleagues in the PWD to clean up their act to give Goans and tourists alike better quality roads, streets, pavements, kerbsides, decently covered gutter chambers, etc, to make Goa an enviably pleasant place for tourists too.
Remember, the biggest attraction of a place are the people. The local people as in niz Goenkars and also not so niz Goenkars who have settled here for many years. Most Goans we know are friendly by nature, laid back and in love with their cultural feasts and fiestas, band music, dances, the good life of plenty vis-à-vis local food and drink. Goa enjoys a hybrid Westernized cosmopolitan culture thanks to its Portuguese history and other Continental influences.
Even the Indian tourists who come take to being casually attired in Western clothing if not hot pants or bikini, or barely draped sarongs. You may just about wear anything without attracting too much attention in Goa. However, Goa and Goans are by and large conservative at heart and you may not take their hospitality for granted. Domestic tourists in particularly need to be a little more sensitive, the Bollywood filmi image of Goa is not the real image of Goa. Visit temples and churches and mosques but be graceful in your attire while visiting these revered places.
Welcome to the Exposition of St Francis Xavier 2024 in old Goa but remember to be circumspectly attired. No shorts or tank tops will be entertained. Also do not drink and drive to endanger yours or anyone else’s life in the vicinity, safeguard the lives of others first. Enjoy your Goan holiday and the government of Goa will listen and redress your problems if you have any.