Yes, Herald fully supports the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa that has said it wants well-behaved tourists in the State. We neither need nor want the tourists who do drugs, who litter the place, who drink in public places, who create a nuisance of themselves. The irony is that we are getting exactly this kind of tourist in Goa, so how do we change the profile of the tourist who visits the State? It cannot be achieved merely by making statements to the media. Nobody is going to listen and act accordingly. It also cannot be achieved by just hoping that better quality tourists will come to the State. Is there any action plan to market Goa to a better behaved segment of tourists?
Here is where the TTAG request that there be proper planning and promotion of Goa in national and international markets, with inputs from industry stakeholders, takes precedence. Goa’s tourism promotion has been mainly led by the government – a bureaucratic initiative with the help of public relation firms – but with the constitution of the Goa Tourism Board that will have an equal number of members from the government and from the industry, this can change and hopefully it will. It can change, because, it will be in the interest of the industry stakeholders who are on the board to grab this opportunity that they have been presented with and steer the government to a more market-oriented plan for the industry. If they fail to take advantage of this board, they will have only themselves to blame.
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One of the functions of the Goa Tourism Board will be developing the broad guidelines and action plan for implementation of identified initiatives in the Goa Tourism Master Plan. These initiatives include marketing and promotion, tourism education, development of infrastructure, new tourism services through State funding and private sector participation, all of which are crucial to restructure Goa tourism for a different clientele set. The focus has to be on marketing the destination in a very different form from which it is currently promoted. Goa’s tourism has suffered due to a lack of any planned marketing strategy that would attract a certain type of tourist who would behave when in Goa and that is why today the State is finding that it has to clean up after the tourists, much to the annoyance of the local residents of the place. The aim has to be responsible and sustainable tourism, which could take Goa out of the list of travellers who are unruly. But, it won’t be easy, it won’t be quick.
The State gained the reputation of being a destination where anything and everything is permitted. It started with the hippie movement of the 1960s, and that reputation was difficult to shrug off. To change this, the branding of Goa Tourism requires to go through a complete transformation so as to attract a set of tourists who will respect the land and the people. The past months that saw a lull in tourism activity due to the pandemic and travel restrictions would have been ideal to initiate these changes. Goa, however, did not work on this. As a result there has been no change in the kind of tourists who are coming to Goa. Enough has been said about wanting richer and well-behaved tourists. If these are not to remain mere statements, the time now is for action, without which there will be no change in Goa’s tourist profile.
