the goan I network
PANAJI
It’s not the Mhadei row which the trade body was worried would ruin the peak season and bring down numbers that hit business in Goa’s tourism space. What actually did, much as it hit other Indian tourist destinations like Agra which hosts the Taj Mahal, is the sustained unrest across the country related to the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the linked National Register for Citizens (NRC).
Travel advisory warning its citizens to refrain from traveling to India were issued by at least a dozen countries, including United States, United Arab Emirates, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Israel, Taiwan, Russia and Singapore.
And Israel and Russia account for a bulk of the nearly 3-lakh foreign tourists Goa hosts on an average annually.
Industry sources said, the turmoil over CAA-NRC protests which have rocked the country and also the Centre’s decision to lock down the internet in various parts as a measure to stem the protests has upset travelers.
Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) president Savio Messias was unwilling to put a definite quantum to the extent to which footfalls dropped due to the CAA-NRC protests but admitted it was the major laggard for business in the crucial Christmas-New Year week. Other tourist destinations, meanwhile, have begun to quantify the dent to business with as many as 2-lakh domestic and foreign tourists said to have either cancelled or deferred their visit to the Taj Mahal in the last fortnight of 2019.
Messias is on record that up to a 40 per-cent decline in occupancy was recorded in the week running up to Christmas. In fact a day after Christmas, the Messias-headed TTAG had in signs of panic said the Mhadei row, although serious for the State, should not take a toll on tourism.
“The Travel and Tourism Association of Goa would
like to appeal to all Goans to refrain from disrupting or opposing the declining tourism in the State because of the Mhadei issue,” Messias had said in a statement released to the media.
Mhadei is a serious issue which needs to be resolved expeditiously, Messias had said, adding however that “it should not be at the cost of destroying tourism”.
The TTAG had also said that tourism was “declining” but made an impassioned appeal that tourism should not be destroyed in the garb of agitating and solving the Mhadei imbroglio. The dispute over sharing Mhadei waters between Goa and Karnataka dates back to over three decades and the two neighbours have been fighting a pitched legal and political battle over it for several years now.
Unexpectedly, however, rather than the row over Mhadei it’s the controversy over CAA-NRC and the associated turmoil which has hurt the tourism sector more, for now.
