Another tourism season is about to get underway. The first charter flights are due to land in a couple of days from Latvia. With mining down, the economy is banking heavily on tourism. But in this sector, it is hard to say what will happen.
Last year's season was widely acknowledged to be less than average by everybody in the trade. Charters were down from 1128 in 2013-14 to 895 in 2014-15. There are enough indications that problems with the Russian economy due to a variety of factors --- will translate into fewer Russian tourists this year. Just how less, no one in the industry is willing to hazard a guess, because Russian bookings tend to be late bird bookings.
What is clear though is that the industry body TTAG has spent a lot of time and effort attempting to bridge this gap and keep the numbers up, by trying to woo back the West European and British holiday markets. Goa once received a large number of Germans, Scandinavian and British tourists in the 1990s. For various reasons those numbers dropped, though the British still kept coming. The latter's numbers and percentage share of the market fell from 41 percent of foreign arrivals in 2006 to 28 percent in 2014. For those same years, the Russians climbed from 8 percent of the market share in 2006 to 30 percent in 2014. Together though they make 57 percent of Goa's foreign tourism arrivals.
This year, the TTAG and government have made a concerted effort to regrow the West European and British numbers. There was much lobbying with the centre to reduce visa fees for the UK for those travelling on short 30 day visas. And there is hope that the e visa facilities extended both to Dabolim airport and to Western European countries will ease up travel.
Almost everyone in the hotel sector of the trade agree that this comparatively higher spending mass market, that block book rooms, represent the better times that the industry has seen, before the recession hit Europe. West Europeans tend to stay an average of nine days, while the British take full two week holidays. Hoteliers swear that 40 percent of Britons are repeat clientèle, who come year after year, some even twice a year to escape the European freeze, and because Goa is way cheaper. All this was good for the trade.
There is one major hitch though in Goa's attempt to reconnect with its West European market. And that is the perception and reality that the state has changed considerably. The crowded North Goa beaches, especially in the main hubs are not exactly clean. South Goa mercifully is spared the lakhs of footfalls that could doom even the most pristine beach. It is in this arena that the disconnect between the tourism trade and the government becomes incredibly apparent and singularly harmful, not just to the tourism industry and stakeholders, but to resident Goans as well.
The trade has always made it clear that it preferred a segment of tourists that are higher spending, that by implication would be low volume. The government is obsessed with statistics and numbers, where a northward bound graph is equated with good --- never mind the quality of those numbers. As long as the statistics are able to show a progression, the government of the day is happy. There is even the belief that the statistics are manipulated to ensure there is no embarrassment, when the numbers drop.
So the jeep and busloads of binge drinking tourists from neighbouring towns and villages, driving in for a day trip, spent out cooking on the streets of Goa, are also notched up as a “desirable” number. In the winter before the 2012 assembly elections, this writer counted an incredible number of mini buses that drove in convoy into the narrow Baga streets, each with all-male travellers and number plates from neighbouring rural districts. At that time one thought it was some electoral strategy to swamp the coastal village, drag down tourism to its nadir and heighten discontent in an election year.
At any rate, the official numbers are that last year Goa got 35.44 lakh domestic visitors and 5.13 lakh foreign visitors, against a resident population of 14 lakh. Does one even need to say that the numbers are killing the state? Numbers like that are bound to impact everything --- transport, traffic, garbage, sewage and waste water systems. The result is that Goa cannot get any cleaner or better in this scenario. The bad news is that the government wants to up these numbers some more. The wisdom of small is beautiful, has ceded to the brash foolishness of more is better. Nor is this a natural, organic growth. It is actively pursued by government. The tourism spends “ whether on local festivals of all sorts, are chasing a particular market that inconveniences the local, depreciates the environment and welfare of residents, and is probably bad economics, though it makes good politics of the warped kind. The spin-offs --- the casinos, dance bars, mushrooming alcohol vendors, the EDM festivals, dirty beaches and public litter --- haven't exactly done Goa's profile or its resident population, any good. Not that the rave and drug scene that was once associated with the non-Indian hedonist, was any better. Both forms of hedonism are considered ill-advised for Goa's tourism --- though there are undoubtedly service providers for both, who seem to have become influential stakeholders in the scheme of things. Fashion designer Wendell Rodricks puts it well, when he says that Goa should stick to encouraging family based tourism ---domestic and foreign --- which translates all round to a good, clean, sustainable model. But who is listening?
