Jan van Djik looks weather beaten. It looks as if he spent a good part of his 67 years strolling on Calangute beach. The Dutchman has been following a 20-year ritual of visiting Goa twice a year. Except that over the last few years, he has been spending less and less time there. “Doing a lot of travel in other parts, especially in the North Benares.”
It was travellers like Djik who made Goa the destination that it is. Tourists from sun-starved European countries escaped to Goa to avoid the brutal winter. Sipping beer, smoking marijuana or just playing a game of beach cricket, they bankrolled Goa’s tourism economy. The hotels, beach shacks, restaurants, two-wheeler hire guys, all made money.
But today it has all spun out of control. Goa is seeing a sharp drop in foreign tourist arrivals compared to other popular Indian destinations like Agra, Jaipur and Kerala. It is also fast losing its billing as an international tourist haven. Most of its competitors, like Bali in Indonesia and Langkawi in Malaysia, have shown impressive growth in 2009. Even upcoming options like Sri Lanka and Vietnam are getting more feelers from European tourists, industry players say (see graphic).
Goa used to get one out of five foreign tourists coming to India. But the 2009 winter season (the peak season, traditionally from October to March) has seen the second consecutive drop in incoming foreign tourists after the dramatic plummet in 2008 — something that the local industry says has happened for the first time.
“This year it looks like the season has got over by mid-January,” says Cruz Cardozo, president of the Goa Shack Owners Association. Various estimates put the total overseas tourist arrivals in 2009 at 300,000, down from about 350,000 a year earlier and about 380,000 in 2007.
Sure, other popular Indian destinations, too, have suffered, but Goa has suffered more. According to tourism ministry, arrivals to India fell by 3.3% in 2009. That is marginal compared to Goa government’s official figure of a 13 percent drop; the local industry estimates a more than a 30% dip.
Home Truths
While the foreigners stay away, Indians have been coming in — industry veterans say the 2002 blockbuster Dil Chahta Hai, partly set in Goa, was a major influence in making the place fashionable for Indians. Bollywood film stars and industrialists who bought property in the state as a status symbol also had something to do with it.
This has “saved the Goan tourism industry in the last two years”, Viveck Pathiyan, general manager at Hotel Fidalgo in capital Panjim, says. The hotel’s clientele has changed dramatically, with Indians now constituting 80 percent of the guests, up from just about 30% earlier.
Yet Indian tourists aren’t a big enough cushion to absorb the fall in overseas guests. On average, overseas travellers stay for almost two weeks; Indian holidays last for just about three days, says Ralph De Souza, president, Travel and Tourism Association of Goa. Hence, the tourism season in Goa lasts for only six months, coinciding with the stay of overseas guests.
Goa got only about 10 lakh Indian tourists in 2009. Agra and Kerala get anything from 3 lakh to 10 lakh foreign visitors every year, but they also get more domestic tourists. Agra gets 2 crore of them, Jaipur 1 crore and Kerala about 60 lakh.
“Indians spend well. Once a group of youngsters came and spent Rs. 14,000 on shots in just a couple of hours,” says Ainsley Kelly, owner of Shooters, a pub near Baga beach. “But our bread and butter are the foreign tourists who come everyday, sit around, drink a beer or two, eat and then go off. That is why this year, business has not been that good.”
The truth is, Goa needs the foreign tourists.
The state’s tourism business is mostly family-owned and operated out of homes, and the drop in overseas holidaymakers is affecting them. Take Jerry’s Corner, a small eatery near Calangute beach that doubles up as a hotel with rooms on top. It used to get 10 European couples every year. “They would stay up to six months. But only six have turned up this season and they will be here for half of the usual time,” says Jerry, the owner. “Sure, the Indians come, but they are here just over the weekend… it is not the same.” He says.
Goa has tried to lure more Indians by transforming itself into a year-round destination, with ‘monsoon holidays’ for couples. These moves have not succeeded.
“Goa, without the foreigners, will not be Goa anymore. And even the Indians will stop coming,” says an official, who heads the local business of a leading travel company and wishes to be unnamed.
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