The Tourism Department recently announced that Goa International Travel Mart (GITM) will happen in October this year. What is really intriguing is that this event which could boost the sagging tourism industry, is happening for the first time in the last five years. The last time GITM happened was in 2014 and prior to that it happened in 2011. Needless to say that the Tourism Department has been really irregular in hosting GITM. The question is: Why so?
GITM is an international level business-to-business (B2B) networking event, which brings tourism stakeholders from all over the world on one platform. In the upcoming GITM alone, buyers from countries like the US, the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Malaysia and of course India are going to participate.
It is baffling that the Tourism Department did not find it necessary to host GITM in the last five years. Sure enough, the department organised road-shows and attended a number of travel marts around the world to promote Goa as a destination. There have been crores of rupees spent from the treasury on international jaunts which have hardly yielded any results.
But for some reason, it chose not to have GITM in Goa. People in the government must realize that it sends a wrong message to both the stakeholders and the tourists, if events like GITM do not happen regularly. In fact, it should have been on top of the tourism marketing calender.
The previous tourism season was perhaps the worst in a long time. The number of foreign travellers declined considerably. Russians, who formed the largest chunk of foreign arrivals in the State, have preferred Egypt and Turkey over Goa.
In fact, several tourism businessmen maintain that even the number of Indian tourists came down in the previous season. The members of Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) had criticized the government sharply for having really poor strategies for marketing Goa as a destination.
Perhaps, it is such factors, which have convinced the government to host GITM again this year. The need of the hour is to host GITM every year, and preferably much before the tourism season starts.
If GITM happens too close to the tourism season (like it is happening this year), the stakeholders don’t get sufficient time to change their strategy to attract tourists. The event should ideally happen in April-May every year.
It is good to know that the Tourism Department has learnt a few things from its mistakes of the past. For example, it has decided to cut down the focus on road-shows in foreign countries. Such shows should happen only in those countries, which have the potential to send a lot of tourists to Goa. Going by records, it indicates that they have no strategy in place with regards to our global marketing.
It’s time to make a fresh start and leave the past behind. The department will do well to realize that an event like GITM must happen regularly in Goa so that tourism stakeholders from the State can easily interact with their counterparts from around the world on one platform.
