PANAJI
Official statistics released by the Tourism Department, indicate arrivals are significantly lesser than what was claimed with reports quoting non official sources who had claimed that more than 2,200 flights landed in Goa over the course of the year.
Significantly the figures indicate, that Germany has completely stopped sending charters to India with not a single German charter flight having arrived in the state during the season. Scandinavian nationals too have all but given up on Goa with only Finland having sent in 12 charter flights bringing in 1776 charter tourists over the course of the seven month long tourism season.
Germany was once the third largest supplier of charter tourists to Goa after Russia and the UK. However with Germans and Scandinavians known to prefer cleanliness and order and Goa unable to arrest either other unruly tourists or garbage, the numbers have begun dropping.
Half the 2.33 lakh tourists who arrived in the State arrived from Russia with 1.6 lakh tourists flying in through 614 flights, which averages to three flights a day for the eight months of the season.
The UK and Goa were other significant sources of charter tourists to being a distant and third respectively.
The most number of foreign tourists arrived in January with 47,142 tourists having arrived closely followed by December which saw 42,133 tourists arrive.
The number is marginally higher than 798 tourists who arrived in Goa the previous season of 2015-16 which brought in 1.59 lakh tourists but lesser than the years between 2012 and 2014 which saw more tourists arrive than this year.
