MAPUSA: Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) President Savio Messias has said that India’s travel and tourism industry was not exciting as expected over the last five years at the Goa International Travel Mart (GITM) 2019 function at Arpora.
“The government had seized upon many bottlenecks that hamper the tourism growth of the country and tried to address them as quickly as possible. Some important decisions surely came a bit late especially correcting the maladies of e-visa regime, the reduction in visa fees, reduction in GST and therefore the fruits of these decisions will only start deriving in the coming years,” Messias said.
He said that due to the efforts of the chief minister, the minister of State for defence, the chief secretary and the tourism secretary, the industry received a great boost; they ensured a TUI charter flight gets a landing slot which was being denied by the Navy authorities. “This means, around 24 Dreamliners will land in Goa bringing in over 7,200 visitors,” he said.
He said that due to the clearance of this slot, TUI have now introduced a fourth Dreamliner a week and chances are brighter of them introducing more flights to compensate for the void created by Thomas Cook’s collapse.
“CM has tried to give a new direction to tourism by focusing on culture and heritage. If Goa needs to grow as an international tourism destination, there is a need to develop more products which appeal to a wide spectrum of travellers. Our long overdue Tourism master plan, which has recently been fast-tracked, and the proposed Goa Tourism Board will go a long way in looking into these aspects. The tourism department should pitch for Goa to be developed as one of the 100 smart tourist destinations sites in India,” Messias said.
“We have a beautiful coastline and we have not been able to develop our beaches because of conservative CRZ guidelines. The country’s coastal regulations that stipulate 200 metre setback is a great handicap. The government has to extend infrastructure status to the hotel industry. Some support from the government would help in setting up infrastructure we require in the hospitality sector,” he added.
