“South Goa is upmarket.” S V Balaram, a veteran of Goa’s tourism industry, says it as a
matter of fact.
At 88, the man behind the district’s first five-star hotel, the
Majorda Beach Resort, is currently advisor to the Varca-based Zuri, hotels and
resorts.
Ask him why the tourists coming to the South are so different
from what the North plays host to and he says simply, “Because the South still
has the old community.”
When it comes to the business of tourism, Goa’s two districts
are as distinct as chalk and cheese—the North is seen as a party destination,
the South is considered laidback. Look for statistics on actual footfalls and
online, a district-wise break up of visitors is restricted to a central
government survey that’s over 13 years old. Local government data is generic.
Agreeing with Balaram’s upmarket tag, Savio Messias of the
Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG), says, “The North is saturated
with all kinds of categories of accommodation, including legal and illegal. In
the South, it’s mostly starred hotels along the coastline, with lower budget
accommodation in only certain areas such as Colva and to an extent Benaulim.
Automatically, your type of tourist is defined.”
This aspect of accommodation is attributed to South Goa’s
reported wariness towards commercial and residential projects. The decade gone
by saw several local “uprisings” in Betul, Colva, Benaulim, and elsewhere to
not just hotels and mega housing projects but to even government-backed
ventures. It’s a fear that the inevitable change in demographics will not just
eat into the state’s limited civic resources, but will also leave locals
outnumbered in their own homeland.
“There seems to be more of an attachment with property as one’s
legacy down South. Up North it seems that property has become a commercial
venture, probably tied with the ‘hippie’ culture of the 60s,” says Andrew
Barreto, 37, an assistant professor and resident of Navelim.
“Protective of their land? Yes. And justifiably so,” says Gerson
Rebello, 59, of Betalbatim. He points out that in the South several families
have at least one member working abroad or in the shipping line in order to
earn a living that will help the family either buy back or rebuild their
ancestral property—whether owned or tenanted—and move up in life.
Elaborating his observation, he says, “This trend of going
abroad to earn a living happened in the North a generation earlier. Then it was
mostly Africa and Canada. By the time the second generation tried to get back
or rebuild their ancestral properties it became just too cumbersome.” Among the
many legal requirements are signatures of extended family members, many of whom
are often scattered across the world.
Limited stay options inevitably affect who is staying.
Pointing out that the South “definitely doesn’t get as many of
those tourists who cook by the roadside as the North does”, Rousel Miranda,
owner of event management firm, Hype, explains, “The North too has starred
hotels but their rates are different because their clientele is different. In
the South, it’s families, older travellers and foreigners who come for the
natural beauty and cleaner beaches.”
“North Goa is party, party, party; the South is chill, relax and
take in the view,” says Leo Vaz, general manager, Siddhivinayak Events.
His view is echoed on many advisory sites online. If you’re
looking for nightlife, flea markets, night markets, all kinds of entertainment
venues, then it’s the North you need to stay in, offers a question-and-answer
website. In the South, you may end up staying in your room after dinner, it
adds.
Elaborating on his “old community” statement, Balaram says South
Goa too parties, but it’s “not loud music”.
“Goa’s charm was wholesome till 1998-2000,” he recalls, “I
remember going to the Calangute parapet to meet my friends. But when the type
of tourist coming to the North changed, my friends moved out of Calangute. Now
I visit them at their homes rather than the beach.”
Ask if it’s the Indian tourist he’s talking about, and he
replies, “There were Indian tourists in the past too, but they came to Goa for
its charm. Now the young traveller (Indian and foreign) wants a certain type of
entertainment. Thank God the young in the South still have some class. They do
party, but not the kind of partying that happens in the North.”
Push him to elaborate and he claims, “The South is less on the
hippie crowd. This is because there’s no loud music and especially no drugs.”
Point out the Canacona stretch of coastline that is also part of
South Goa, and he says things there are akin to the tourism scene in the North,
unlike the Velsao to Cavelossim-Mobor stretch.
Steering clear of the controversial side of Goa’s tourism and
alluding to the “quality” of South Goa, Miranda gives the example of the
international music acts he brought to Goa from 2014 to 2017. “Sure the volume
of tourists and business is bigger in the North, but (the ticket sales for)
live bands worked better in the South.”
Summing up the distribution of business in the districts through
the example of “the last taxi strike”, Messias says, “Of the 40 government-run
buses carrying tourists from the airport to their hotels, almost 37 were headed
North. Only about 10% of tourists were headed to the South.”
For the non-starred hotel and peripheral players in South Goa’s
tourist scene, especially those in the shack business, at a time when the
number of tourists in Goa is so low, the southern charm may not be too much a
comfort.
But
many believe rightly that South Goa still gives you a feel of what Goa once
was, and what it should have remained.
