NISHITHA SHRIVASTAVA
PANJIM: After the Russians, the Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) plans to aggressively pitch the sunny State to Japanese tourists. And it is not letting a minor trifle such as the fact that what one of the selling points in its pitch ~ golf ~ has no facilities in Goa!
“We intend to market Goa aggressively in Japanese market. Japanese are high spenders and currently Goa has attractions for the Japanese like golf courses,” says Sanjay Chodnekar, General Manager, GTDC. Only problem is there are no golf courses in Goa “currently”.
Asked about these “golf courses”, GTDC chairman Nilesh Cabral said, “I don’t know about any golf courses. We don’t have any, so how are they promoting it?” He, however, confirmed that they are eyeing an increase in tourists from the Japanese markets.
Also on the agenda are American tourists, who currently constitute only about 15 per cent of India’s tourists. Cabral said: “In America, we are trying to tap the NRI market. We will be organizing roadshows in the US and Japan later this year to promote Goa as a tourist destination.”
Explaining the elusiveness from these two markets, Victor Albuquerque, honorary consul of the Russian Federation in Goa, says America and Japan are not within the radius of tourism to Goa due to the long distance, which makes it unviable. Albuquerque also states that high-end tourists from Russia are not visiting Goa because of lack of infrastructure and other tourism facilities such as golf courses.
When asked about the infrastructure that will be provided to attract these markets to Goa, Cabral says, “We will give them the infrastructure that a tourist destination normally has. We are working on toilets and changing rooms on beaches, which should be done by the end of this year, atleast at prime beaches.”
Ralph de Sousa, group chairman of De Souza group and former president of Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG), cites reasons such as absence of professional marketing strategies, high-end fine dining restaurants serving Porto-Goan and Indian Colonial menus, type of shopping that the rich and the famous go for and short-and long- term planning, for these markets staying away.
