TEAM HERALD
business@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The state is one of the more popular tourist destinations in the country. It attracted over 26 lakh domestic tourists this season and over 5 lakh international tourists. The Government has increased its focus on high spending tourists with a potential to significantly impact the state economy and provide employment.
Towards this, the Government welcomes investment in high-end tourism products including, but not limited to creating tourism hubs. These will include oceanariums, theme parks, shopping malls, food & beverage outlets, entertainment centers and handicraft centres. Convention centres will be created to induce corporate to conduct their events in the state. Develop high-end water sports and adventure sports. Marinas at designated locations and hinterland river cruise tourism will be encouraged.
The state government envisages these projects will be completed through private investment or through Public Private Partnership models. To government targets granting permissions to hotels across categories, towards building a cumulative additional capacity of around 8000 beds in the next 5 years. In order to achieve gainful employment for Goan youth, stress will be laid on creation of infrastructure and facilities which will attract high-end visitors. The disparity in proportion of low-end to high-end hotels is proposed to be addressed by encouraging more boutique and luxury hotels.
The Government also plans to renovate and modernize properties belonging to the Goa Tourism Development Corporation.
Health and wellness tourism is an emerging area in India with an estimated 1.3 million visitors in 2013. Goa has good basic healthcare infrastructure as shown in the table below While medical tourism is growing in Goa, the Government is keen to attract investments in new facilities and draw more medical tourists to Goa for high-end and complicated procedures.
For medical tourism to take off in a big way, uniformity and quality of services offered are critical. Towards standardizing, ensuring quality and marketing medical tourism in Goa, the government is encouraging large healthcare facilities to set up hospitals in Goa to meet the needs of the increasing medical tourists. Mandatory registration with the Directorate of Health Services and the Goa Medical Council for facilities offering medical tourism will be introduced.
A rate card and details of facilities will be required for all facilities. The Government will start a web portal with details of each healthcare facility, procedures offered and rate card. The portal will assist in putting patients in touch with doctors or facilities which they are interested in.
To ensure that success is achieved, the relevant Government authorities will participate in national and international conferences promoting medical tourism. In addition wellness facilities and alternative systems of medicine will also be encouraged through existing channels of the Tourism Department, Government of Goa.
