What’s Goa-ing on? The past, present and future of tourism in Goa

Justine Cal­ais of the Respons­ible Tour­ism Col­lect­ive of Goa shares her “GT” Insight into what’s really going on with tour­ism in Indi­a’s Sun­shine State.

Goa is a unique place. It is fair to say that it has everything going for it that a tour­ism des­tin­a­tion could ever wish to have — but at the same time it has a lot going wrong for it. And herein lies the tragedy.

Tour­ists have been com­ing to Goa for years. From around the mid 1960’s onwards, European trav­el­lers star­ted arriv­ing on the Hip­pie trail. They found a Goa that was com­pletely untouched; there was noth­ing here – Goa was bliss­fully ignor­ant that tour­ists even exis­ted! The loc­als provided for them, but only as an exten­sion to the way they were already liv­ing – per­haps a fish­er­man would decide to build an exten­sion to his thatched beach hut, and to catch an extra fish for din­ner. The peace-lov­ing hip­pies would have cre­ated their own hangouts, no doubt inspired by the Goan ‘susegad’ way of life.

Not until the mid 1980’s did organ­ised tour­ism really begin, with the onset of charter flights. The num­bers have stead­ily increased over the years. 2016 – 17 saw 988 inter­na­tion­al charter flights arrive into Goa, off­load­ing a total of around 233,000 pas­sen­gers. But this is only a frac­tion of the story. Total tour­ist num­bers for the same year stand at around 6.4 mil­lion (of which domest­ic tour­ists account for a stag­ger­ing 5.7 million). 

Inter­na­tion­al tour­ist num­bers seem to be hold­ing up for now. Although every year there are more and more insi­di­ous indic­at­ors that this might not be the case for very long. In Feb­ru­ary this year, Fin­nair decided to stop fly­ing to Goa after 25 years. Every year, for­eign tour­ist reg­u­lars lament about how Goa has changed so much, and that oth­er des­tin­a­tions now offer bet­ter value for money (what they really mean is – beaches which are not strewn with plastic lit­ter and broken bottles and over­run with hordes of ogling men). At the end of the hol­i­day, people just want the basics taken care of.

The domest­ic tour­ist num­bers present an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent story. Dra­mat­ic increases over the last 10 years (and par­tic­u­larly the last five years) are a dir­ect res­ult of middle class mobil­ity in Indi­an cit­ies cor­res­pond­ing with the rap­id growth in domest­ic avi­ation. But many more arrive by road, spill­ing in from oth­er states in huge bus­loads and private vehicles. The vast major­ity of road tour­ists do not check-in to accom­mod­a­tion, spend at res­taur­ants, or have any access to san­it­a­tion facil­it­ies. The res­ult­ant prob­lems are self-explanatory. 

Times are changing

As is the sad irony with many sought-after des­tin­a­tions, the very things that attract people can be the ones most likely to get des­troyed – mean­ing that places with the most impress­ive invent­or­ies can poten­tially self-sab­ot­age. India’s Sun­shine State is cer­tainly a case in point, with its beau­ti­ful coast­line of sandy beaches, palm tree pic­ture-per­fect land­scapes, verd­ant paddy fields, Por­tuguese colo­ni­al houses, Cath­ol­ic churches at every turn, quaint vil­lages, easy-going loc­al cul­ture, stun­ning biod­iversity, riv­er­ine sys­tems, sea­food-rich loc­al cuisine – and the list truly goes on. It’s long his­tory as a Por­tuguese colony for 450 years has always giv­en it a European­ised edge over the rest of India (which com­par­at­ively was col­on­ised by the Brit­ish for only 89 years). Right here in India, you could frol­ic on the beach in a bikini while drink­ing loc­al King­fish­er Beer straight out of the bottle, and no one would bat an eyelid!

But the story is chan­ging. These days, the sun rises on a sandy beach fes­ter­ing with last night’s trash; but no one will be employed to pick it up. Coconut trees are hacked down in the dead of night for widen­ing roads. Illeg­al con­struc­tion mys­ter­i­ously appears in a paddy field because the loc­al Pan­chay­at (Coun­cil) is mak­ing a quick buck. Loc­als become hos­tile and an anti-out­sider sen­ti­ment sets in. Loc­al fish­er­man can’t earn a liv­ing because author­it­ies don’t respond to illeg­al fish­ing trawl­ers. Intim­id­at­ing groups of men that have just driv­en across the bor­der from a neigh­bour­ing con­ser­vat­ive state feast their eyes on bikini-clad ladies.

Of course, not all these prob­lems can be dir­ectly attrib­uted to tour­ism, but in a state where accord­ing to mod­est estim­ates, tour­ism rep­res­ents 40% of the GDP, (and where the oth­er major industry, min­ing, is cur­rently in deep trouble) no prob­lem is sep­ar­ate from tour­ism, and vice versa. But if the gov­ern­ment and enforce­ment author­it­ies can’t even get the basics right – and moreover, know­ingly choose inac­tion over solu­tions, or worse still, com­pli­city over trans­par­ency – then what hope is there of ever pro­gress­ing to the next level where we can even think of cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able tour­ism mod­el, as has been so suc­cess­fully imple­men­ted in nearby Ker­ala, or even now Sri Lanka. 

Instead, Goa pro­motes its casi­nos on huge bill­boards at the air­port. It cur­rently has six off­shore casi­nos – massive boats anchored in the Man­dovi River, all in close prox­im­ity to one anoth­er and just a stone’s throw from the prom­en­ades of the cap­it­al city Panjim. The latest new­comer to the fleet is Big Daddy. Little thought is giv­en to the type of tour­ism this attracts – male dom­in­ated, alco­hol-fuelled, and thrill seek­ing. Gambling is illeg­al in pretty much the rest of India, and des­pite numer­ous prom­ises from the state to phase out the casi­nos noth­ing has changed yet. So what we are really gambling with is Goa’s future.

Everything will be fine!

But accord­ing to the Tour­ism Depart­ment, everything is under con­trol – thanks to the Mas­ter Tour­ism Plan they have come up with. Under this pro­pos­al, casi­nos will be relo­cated from one eco­lo­gic­ally fra­gile river bay area to anoth­er and labelled ‘organ­ised gam­ing clusters’. What dif­fer­ence this will make is hard to com­pre­hend. Oth­er vis­ions for the state include golf courses, fam­ily enter­tain­ment dis­tricts, F&B courts, mar­i­nas, mul­ti­me­dia exper­i­ences, amphi­bi­an buses, and the bizarre wish list goes on. Lit­er­ally hun­dreds of present­a­tion slides that make up the 4 Mas­ter Plan mod­ules are filled with glitzy images of oth­er des­tin­a­tions like Ibiza, Macau and the Mal­dives – that we in Goa should be striv­ing to imit­ate. For any­one who has any com­mon sense or on-the-ground know­ledge of Goa, the Mas­ter Plan looks ludicrous and bey­ond delu­sion­al. But this is hardly sur­pris­ing, giv­en the fact that for­eign con­sult­ants at KPMG, who know noth­ing real about Goa, were tasked with decid­ing its future. The Tour­ism Depart­ment seem to think this is all fine – after all they are the ones who com­mis­sioned KPMG for the job. But the rest of Goa is up in arms, and the pro­pos­als are being widely cri­ti­cised by industry, loc­al cit­izens, stake­hold­er bod­ies, NGOs, act­iv­ists and experts alike. 

Against this whole back­drop, one won­ders who will be the true stew­ards of des­tin­a­tion Goa. Till now, there are cer­tain stake­hold­er bod­ies that fight for a seat at the table and for their voices to be heard, but it is always a case of strug­gling against the sys­tem. The Travel and Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation of Goa (the apex industry body) recently lodged com­plaints that the Tour­ism Min­is­ter was reluct­ant to meet its mem­bers. When meet­ings even­tu­ally do hap­pen, the media pre­dict that ‘fire­works’ will occur, due to the pent-up frus­tra­tion that gets ven­ted at these all-to-infre­quent events. Anoth­er body, the Respons­ible Tour­ism Col­lect­ive of Goa, is a recently formed group of busi­ness mem­bers run­ning truly respons­ible enter­prises. They aim to expand their mem­ber­ship, edu­cate and raise aware­ness, act­ively pro­mote respons­ible tour­ism and work with the gov­ern­ment. Their web­site provides an impress­ive range of options for the con­scious traveller. 

The tur­bu­lent tour­ism-scape that we find ourselves in must not res­ult in com­plete dis­il­lu­sion­ment and apathy. Organ­ised, co-ordin­ated and pro­act­ive groups of people that can become voices to be reckoned with at the gov­ern­ment level present the best option we have. At the same time, tour­ism busi­nesses must always strive to be forces for good with­in their sur­round­ing com­munit­ies and envir­on­ment. If we can reach a crit­ic­al num­ber of indi­vidu­als and enter­prises com­mit­ted to the sus­tain­able future of Goa, this may be the only real­ist­ic way forward. 

Fea­tured image: Goa beach scene, March 2013. By Saad Faruque (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wiki­me­dia. GT” cropped and enhanced it.

About the author

After gradu­at­ing with a BA in Inter­na­tion­al Polit­ics in Lon­don, Justine Cal­ais worked in hos­pit­al­ity in the UK. Her exper­i­ences there led her to make a move into the sus­tain­able tour­ism space, and for the last few months she has been run­ning the Respons­ible Tour­ism Col­lect­ive of Goa — a group of like-minded busi­nesses that pro­mote respons­ible tour­ism and eco-con­scious travel.