Stephen Myall
Having arrived in Goa 01.12.2016, it is only now that I have had the chance to review “Walk the Talk” interview of Hon Chief Minister (CM) Mr Laxmikant Parsekar, broadcast on 18.11.2016 on a leading channel. I found the most disturbing aspect of the interview was the CM’s preference for the domestic tourist over the foreign tourist.
Mr Parsekar contrasts the economic contribution to the state made by the desi tourist, who arrives with his family, and shops in markets, with the foreign tourist who buys a juice or a beer and spends all day sleeping it off at the beach shack.
Perhaps Mr Parsekar needs to consult more widely with his colleagues in Goa Tourism. Notwithstanding the oversight of not actually having granted any shack licences this season, I think that the CM will find that foreign tourists spend large amounts of money, despite demonetisation.
As an independent traveller to Goa, I will inject several lakh rupees into the State economy, spent on accommodation and food prepared in restaurants and shacks over, what for me, is a four-month season, every year. The desi tourists tend to come for long weekends, leave whole families to a room designed for a married couple, consume the food and drinks that they have bought in markets and liquor stores in their rooms or on the beach, thus neatly avoiding doing any business and leaving all of their garbage trailing in their wake.
The director of Dabolim Airport was recently quoted as saying that there had been absolutely no decline in the number of charter flights arriving in Goa. I would not dispute this, but think that you will find that the statistics will show that they were far from full to capacity, due to cancellations by tourists not wanting to spend every day of a two or three-week holiday queuing at banks and ATMs.
The independent travellers to Goa, who stay, typically, for months, not the package tourists’ couple of weeks, and spend lakhs of rupees with businesses up and down the coastal belt, do not figure in your tourism statistics, which only measure charter flight passengers, staying in resorts, but should be appreciated as being even more valuable than ever against, what will be proved to be, a decline in charter flight passengers, and not be characterised as scroungers taking up a sun bed all day on the strength of one warm beer.
