At the International Centre Goa, eminent personalities of the tourism industry led by Sunder Advani, Chairman and Managing Director of Advani Hotel gathered together at a roundtable discussion on Tourism organized by the Vibrant Goa Foundation and supported by HDFC Spectrum.
Manav Thadani, Founder CEO Hotelivate Consultants, chaired the first session entitled “Status of Tourism today and where we want to be”. He presented results of the World Travel & Tourism Council 2019 State Ranking Survey, where Goa was awarded the Destination Leadership Award 2019 for state with overall best performance in 2019. However, he cautions that the industry should not rest and should now focus on investing effectively and look at developing a Tourism Plan for the state. Panellist Gagan Malik, Airport Director of Goa International Airport touched upon the expansion of the current airport and construction of the new airport thus increasing the capacity of receiving tourists into the State of Goa. Gavin Dias, General Manager of Goa Tourism Development Corporation emphasized that there is a great need to reinvent tourism in Goa towards which steps have been taken such as Adventure Tourism – Bungee Jumping, Family Entertainment – 3D and 5D and hot air ballooning. He also touched upon the fact that connectivity within Goa and to other states needs to be improved to boost tourism and the maintaining of capacity caps at nature attractions to allow for sustainable tourism.
The second session “Challenges and Opportunities for Tourism in Goa” chaired by Vincent Ramos, Area Director – Taj Group and General Manager of Taj Exotica focused on the need for cleanliness, hygiene and organization of the MICE industry. Martin Joseph, Managing Director of Freedom Holidays emphasized on the need to improve the facilities, infrastructure and the need to draw up a master plan for the future of the state. Serrao Francis, Managing Director of Crosscraft Pvt Ltd highlighted that Goa is the finest destination in the world, with beautiful people, culture and cuisine and should work towards making it better through lobbying for infrastructure.
Jack Sukhija, Secretary of Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) chaired the third session “A Possible Way Forward for Goa” pointed out the need to start presenting the hinterlands, developing the interiors and prepare an Agro Tourism policy. He also stated the need to have a convention centre is vital as MICE is a large opportunity being lost out on; further stating that there is a need to streamline and bring into the system the various OYOs and Air BnBs which are currently unregistered. Venkatesh Somayaji, Founder, Visage 11 Advisors, advised that Goa needs to reinvent itself through better PR and marketing and the change of the mind-set of people can be done through the stories being told. The focus needs to be on quality of tourist and encouraging them to spend in the right place and this revenue capture can be done through effective communication.
Nitin Kunkolienker, Chairman Vibrant Goa Foundation pointed out that tourism has the highest multiplier and value chain that it creates could be potentially widened. Rajkumar Kamat, President, Vibrant Goa Foundation summarised the meeting and proposed the vote of thanks.
The Honorable Chief Minister Dr. Pramod Sawant had direct interaction with attendees of the roundtable and praised the efforts of Vibrant Goa in putting together the roundtable to have the opportunity to discuss measures that can be taken towards improving tourism in Goa. App based taxi Goa Miles is working on doubling the number of taxis to help better penetration and availability. Goa Tourism has taken over the cleaning of beaches from the Panchayat and is coming out with an app to help citizens communicate un-clean areas directly and which will be actioned immediately. The stakeholders requested that the hotel licence renewal be revised to 5 years as opposed to the 1 year that it is currently, the Hon. Chief Minister has assured to look into this positively. He also assured the stakeholders to look into the Music Act and excise.
