VIBHA VERMA
vibha@hearld-goa.com
PANJIM: The State government has hit the wrong button in trying when it comes to attracting international visitors as some countries have shown a poor response, as can be seen in the just-concluded tourist season.
The data of tourist arrivals will leave tourism officials red-faced, particularly because Germany had nil charter arrivals throughout the season from October 2017 to April 2018, despite the State’s annual ‘Brand Goa’ promotion. There were no charters from Germany in May either.
A few weeks ago a Goa Tourism delegation returned from Berlin (Germany) and thereafter flew to Australia, US and Finland, in what the Tourism Department claims is to sell Goa’s various facets of tourism worldwide.
Records available with Herald reveal that among the most visited countries, Germany recorded zero charter arrivals, while just 15 charter flights carrying 2,398 tourists flew from Finland during this period. The previous tourism season – 2016-17 – also saw a similar response wherein Germany recorded zero charter flights and zero tourists while 12 charter flights that came from Finland brought 1,776 tourists.
The argument that arrivals from Finland increased this year, albeit marginally, does not convince Goan stakeholders considering that tourism officials spend large amounts of public money to travel abroad only to get poor returns.
What’s interesting is that countries like Australia, US, Spain, Turkey, Poland and other such places, where tourism officials also ensure their presence, do not figure in the government’s ‘country wise charter statistics’ indicating arrivals are definitely not up to the mark.
A question that arises is: when Goa’s main source markets like UK and Russia are steady, why do tourism officials repeat trips to other countries? Russia, in the recent past superseded Britain’s arrivals with the last two seasons – 2016-17 and 2017-18 – recording an impressive 1,60,728 and 1,66,057 arrivals respectively. The charter flights also increased from 614 in 2016-17 to 639 in 2017-18. Thus, Russians topped the arrivals chart this season as well.
Sources told Herald that at the recent travel mart in Moscow, Tourism Minister Manohar Azgaonkar allegedly chose to remain absent on the first three business days but attended the concluding day, marked as ‘public day’.
The current tourist season beginning from May last year till April had 969 charter flights from international destinations bringing in 2.45 lakh tourists. The tourist season 2016-17 had 988 charter flights landing and had brought in 2.32 lakh foreign travelers.
The data provided by department further reveals that 7.7 million tourists – both domestic and international travelers – visited the State during the year 2017 in addition to 8.6 lakh visitors who arrived here between January to March 2018. Cruise ships, coming from November 2017 till April 2018, brought in 65,523 tourists.
Travel and Tourism Association of Goa President Savio Messias said that the tourist season was good, but the State needs to really gear up for the next season.
