From The Asian Age
By Pamela D’Mello

Industry unhappy with low-profit Goa tourism
Panaji, May 1

As India’s premier holiday playground, coastal Goa, supposedly has it all,
local industrymen are not upbeat about this smokeless industry.

“Discontent and disillusionment is looming large here and competition is
putting awesome pressure on the trade,” says Mr Kirit Maganlal, outgoing
president of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa.

At an annual meeting of the association late last week, Mr Maganlal said:
“Diminishing margins, unhealthy competition from within, poor
infrastructure and political instability” were affecting the industry.

Though it employs an estimated two lakh people directly and indirectly, the
end result is not satisfactory, he said, at the end of an admittedly lean
tourist season. In the past year, hoteliers and tour operators grappled
with an aggressive taxi lobby, which repeatedly blocked the ferrying of
tourists in buses.

Meanwhile, competition may come from other quarters as well in an era of
globalisation. Academics, who met in April for a revaluation of tourism,
have called for a closer look at the implications of India’s signing the
General Agreements on Trade in Services.

“India has agreed to allow equal access to all member-countries to run
restaurants in our country,” says Mr Alito Sequeira, tourism researcher and
sociology lecturer at the Goa University. International tourist arrivals to
Goa have risen steadily.

Charter arrivals have grown from 3.85 per cent in 1985-86 (the year of its
inception) to over 30 per cent in the 1998-99 season, Mr Sequeira stated in
his key note address. But the increased numbers have not brought
proportional profits.

Following international trends, the average duration of stay and the
average income of charter tourists have fallen, Mr Sequeira noted, an often
repeated concern of those in the tourism trade.

Low-priced rent-back rooms (Rs 200-300 a day as against Rs 1,500-3,000 in
starred hotels) in the charter belt of Calangute-Candolim, are favoured by
foreign tour operators, though hotel-owners in Goa cry foul.

These rent-back hotels, with minimum investment in ambience, sewage
treatment and waste disposal, have “led to serious environmental and health
concerns,” borne in health and financial costs by the public, Mr Sequeira
points out. While hotels seek to lower taxes on itself, even these would be
a pittance if the “polluter pays” principle was applied to the costs of
environmental and health degradation, he said.

Though dragged to court on noise pollution and violation of other norms,
the number of constructions coming up is faster than the number of cases
that can be examined by the court. Increasingly, the hotel trade is
realising that rich urban Indians may be higher spenders than foreign
charter tourists, but this shift in the market with differing cultural and
recreational preferences, has yet to be addressed.

E-commerce for Internet room bookings also offers the possibility of
reducing the role and the “hefty commissions” skimmed off by tour
operators, Mr Sequeira said. Tourism planning and its implementation thus
far has failed in Goa, he says, calling for a better balance between
private profits and public costs.

http://www.asianagenews.com/asianage/02052000/detind15.htm