The Goa Tourism Department on Saturday released the official tourist statistics for 2025, and the results are not encouraging. While the overall headline figure shows an increase from 1.05 crore arrivals in 2024 to 1.08 crore arrivals in 2025, it masks the real story of the hollowing out of the core that sustained Goa’s tourism for decades now.
Charter arrivals, which were once the bread and butter of Goa’s tourism industry, have recorded an all-time low. According to the department, as of 2025, Goa received 189 charter flights, bringing in 40,336 foreign tourists, with operations split between Dabolim and Mopa airports. This figure is even lower than 2024, when Goa received 266 flights and 58,680 tourists and is a far cry from the 799 flights and 2,16,738 tourists in 2019, the last year before Covid.
In fact, charter arrivals to Goa peaked in 2014 and have been in a steady decline since then. 40,336 charter arrivals are less than one-fifth of the 2019 figure, and being lower than the number of those who arrived in 2024 belies claims that Goa is witnessing a recovery, albeit a slower one, after Covid. The writing is on the wall. Goa’s and India’s charter story is over, and they are not coming back. For good. The conditions that brought foreigners to India no longer exist, and there are other destinations that today offer a better experience for a comparable price -- be it Sri Lanka or South East Asia.
While there will be many to try and apportion blame on unresolved issues like the taxi operators or the like, the fact remains that it goes beyond just that. As revealed by several stakeholders, the Goa that originally brought foreign tourists to its shores no longer exists. Today’s Goa is one of overcrowding in tourist places, garbage strewn and not collected, unplanned development and encroachments allowed to flourish unchecked and a failure or unwillingness to tackle bad characters in the form of lechers, roadside romeos and unruly domestic tourists who sexually harass foreign tourists, especially women, for photos, staring at them while they are sunbathing.
The government has promised to crack down on these elements, with Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte saying that such nuisance tourists are unwanted in Goa, but it is too little too late. According to old-timers in the tourism space, these issues have been allowed to fester for far too long and have remained unaddressed despite being raised time and again. Between the Tourism Department, the local village panchayat and the Goa Police -- the three main departments equipped to tackle these issues, a blame game has resulted in no one really being in charge to ensure that at the end of the day, the foreign tourist who visits the state actually leaves with a good experience.
The decline is being seen even in sectors that are believed to be growing like the cruise tourism sector, which has seen fewer foreign tourists arrive by cruise ships than last year. In 2024, Goa received 50 vessels and 66,555 passengers, but as per 2025 figures, 37 cruise vessels called at Goa, bringing in a total of 51,510 passengers, comprising 10,086 foreign tourists and 41,424 domestic tourists.
It is no secret that foreign tourists, on average, stay longer and spend more, but they are being crowded out. Without them, Goa can no longer claim to be a premium tourist destination and quite simply has its own lackadaisical attitude to blame for it.
