Thousands of tourists on New Year’s Eve, but numbers drop, say hoteliers

CALANGUTE: Thousands of tourists were seen along the Calangute-Baga beach belt on New Year’s Eve on Monday. However, there is a comparative drop in the number of tourists at the same time last year. Every other hotel, night club and restaurant in the area is offering New Year packages.

Cruz Cardozo, who heads the Shack Owners’ Welfare Society, said that there are more tourists now compared to Christmas but overall the business is low.

“The season is not looking that bright as it used to be earlier. Three years ago we were so busy during this time of the year. We were expecting more tourists than this. The number of foreign tourists arriving in the State has declined by 50 per cent,” said Cruz.

Sebastian D’Souza, a shack owner from Candolim, said, “On New Year’s Eve there are tourists at the beaches but not that many like the past years. Goa used to be the most preferred destination during Christmas and New Year”.

Other outlet owners claim that the introduction of Goods and Service Tax (GST) that led to the increase in room tariffs as well as the cost of food and drinks, has affected the tourist footfall drastically.

Tourism stakeholders opine that the response of tourists is very less this time due to a number of reasons such as higher taxes and expensive hotel rates. One can recall that the shacks, which earlier used to attract huge crowd at the beaches, wore a deserted look even on Christmas Eve this year.

When Herald contacted Calangute sarpanch Shawn Martins he said that the flow of traffic was smooth along the coastal belt.

“All tourist buses, tempos, mini-buses and jeeps bringing in large groups were stopped on the village outskirts. We made elaborate parking arrangement for these vehicles. Four parking lots were set up which accommodated around 200-odd heavy vehicles. The Calangute Traffic Cell team has done a fairly good job due to which there was no major traffic jam,” Shawn said.

“The Calangute Panchayat hired two towing vehicles during this period and kept it at the disposal of the Traffic Cell. However, the crowd this year is nearly half of which was witnessed last year during this time,” Shawn added.

Calangute PI Jivba Dalvi said that the entire Christmas week went on smoothly and no untoward incident was reported.