VASCO
Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte on Thursday said the tourism department was trying to focus on coastal and nautical tourism in the State in a bid to attract quality tourists.
Khaunte was speaking to reporters after a review meeting in the Mormugao Port Authority (MPA) along with Union Minister of State for Shipping Shripad Naik.
"We are focusing on nautical and coastal tourism and the first thing in this direction was the first Incredible India Cruise Tourism conference through the initiative of Union Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and we shared a lot of ideas,” said Khaunte.
“We came to MPA to think about getting this vertical right and importantly, if we want to increase the Goa tourism in various sectors and get quality tourists, we need to have a wholesome approach to meet expectations of employment and revenue as well.”
“We had a preliminary meeting chaired by Union Minister of State for Shipping Shripad Naik at MPA to see the aspect of cruise terminals and the challenges we could face. We need to give a proper road map if we want to expand the cruise tourism and we wanted to see how MPA is going about it and how it could boost tourism in Goa,” Khaunte added.
Emphasising the need to have a right concept to bring in quality tourists, the minister said projects like ropeways and cruise tourism are all good ideas.
“We are talking to all stakeholders and we want to see how we can improve tourism in Goa in the next five years even in term of tourism infrastructure. Naik is giving us a lot of support from the Centre with various schemes and we need to see how best we can get Goa as a top tourism destination," said Khaunte.
