Goa’s tourism scenario improving

NT NETWORK
Posted on 2008-12-22
PANAJI- After the initial shock of the Mumbai blasts coupled with the global financial meltdown the Goan tourism scenario seems to be ‘looking up,’ in spite of the ban on beach parties with occupancy rising as Christmas draws near.
“The present occupancy has touched 80 per cent across the board - both in big and small hotels - and we should touch 100 per cent by New Year,” says the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa president, Mr Ralph De Souza sounding a lot less stressed.
“The initial shock has gone and things are looking up,” he says and stresses that all parties are on at all venues and the positive thing is that these parties are being upgraded and ‘add ons’ are being given to the people enticing them to come.
“The parties are going to be people friendly with good entertainment and better buffets as well as without the premium that was witnessed earlier,” he argues. His rationale on why the ban had not affected much is that the people who were to come down for Christmas are already in the state but as the restrictions are only on the beach parties, overall this will not have too much of an effect, even on shacks, he feels. He also says that there are a lot of inquiries.
The state has nearly 30,000 hotel rooms spread across different categories throughout the state and its tourism season peaks during Christmas and New Year. Five million foreign tourists visited India last year.
However, there are media reports quoting the Indian Association of Tour Operators as saying that there has been a 15 to 20 per cent drop in the number of tourists visiting the country since the Mumbai attacks and sources say that this falling number of visitors has been a double blow for the tourism industry, already hit by lessening number of tourists from Western countries, due to the economic recession in United States and Europe.
Reports say that last year the number of visitors to the country grew by 12 per cent but this global slowdown has led to revised growth estimates to just five per cent this year. But this had not taken into account the Mumbai attacks and industry fears that these attacks may even make these revised figures difficult to achieve.