Calangute: With their business already struggling this season due to the dwindling number of foreign charter tourists, many beach shacks along the popular beach belt of Calangute-Candolim have shut down operations much before the stipulated date of May 31. It is pertinent to note that foreign tourists are the main patrons of beach shacks and in their absence, businesses along the coast have been hit negatively.
Even though the tourism department claims to have held promotional events in many countries and participated in various international travel marts, no foreign tourists are coming to Goa, stated Manuel Cardozo, president of the Goan Traditional Shacks Owners Association.
“The government can say whatever it wants. They say there are lakhs of tourists coming and flights to Mopa have increased, but there is no business. The domestic tourists who are coming are not the spending type. All those shacks who depend on foreign charter tourists have closed down in March. Most of the shacks in Candolim have closed down,” Cardozo said.
A silver lining was provided by the return of retired foreigners who once formed a significant crowd in Calangute-Candolim. “This time, we have seen some of the old British tourists returning back to Goa. But we don’t see any new or young foreigners in the beach-belt like in the good old days,” hotelier and former Calangute sarpanch Shawn Martin said.
The season has been bad, John Lobo, general secretary of the Shack Owners Welfare Society, said. “The only tourists making their way to Calangute are the low-budget tourists. They come in the morning with their cooking equipment, buy liquor bottles, cook wherever they can, make a mess of the place and go back in the evening. Even if they stay in a hotel, they don’t eat there,” he said.
Many locals in the Calangute-Candolim beach-belt who had been allotted shacks in November last year had failed to pay the licence fee, while many others had decided not to open up their shacks even after paying the licence fee because of fears that it would be a bad season. The Calangute-Candolim beach-belt has 200-odd shacks, the maximum in Goa.
