Wherever one goes in Goa these days, one hardly fails to notice half empty hotel rooms and nearly empty restaurants. Goa is currently paying a price for plain neglect of basic tourist infrastructure for the foreign tourists and lack of policing to manage domestic tourism.
About foreign tourists, there are international websites such as Tripadvisor, etc that contain reviews from these disgruntled tourists who had just experienced chaotic scenes at Dabolim Airport on arrival. Potholes on roads, unmarked speed breakers, immense trash all along roads, crazy bike and car drivers, lack of footpaths and pedestrian crossings, rip off food prices at restaurants and shacks, uncovered gutters, cows everywhere, filth everywhere, etc.
These bad reviews of Goa will influence others’ thinking of coming here for the first time. No amount of international publicity will balance honest tourist opinions about Goa. The collapse of Thomas Cook also affected people travelling from overseas. About domestic tourists, frankly I do not know where to start. Their behaviour is appalling, drunkards everywhere — yet in Hindi movies a drunkard will be always portrayed with a Christian name and a big cross on their chest! Crazy drivers with MH and KA number plates… I had seen animalistic behaviour of these people everywhere they go, walking in the middle of main roads and their filthy manners and throwing trash everywhere on the beaches are disgusting.
Coming to Goa to take a selfie with a foreign lady, a bikini tourist is the worst publicity one can give to Goa and will only fuel more publicity for these useless, depraved, low mentality domestic young tourists.
Claims by Goan officials that they had gone ‘overseas’ to find more about how to bring in more tourists are laughable. There are hardly any infrastructure for the tourists in Goan streets for them — toilets, pedestrian crossings, proper clean and covered footpaths, reasonable prices at shacks, less hassle by domestic tourists and non-Goan beach vendors, etc.
The money these ministers use for their trips overseas would go a long way instead being used to provide the above basic amenities if Goa is to be marketed as a world tourist destination it was years ago. Why not call in unbiased, experienced consultants, who understand Goa and overseas tourism, instead of these politicians, who have no experience in the complex tourism industry dynamics?
Finally, considering the justifications to build MOPA where the projected government tourist figures were plain fiction, if anybody recalls them, is there a real need now for yet another giant elephant project to further destroy Goa?
