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Police in Goa treat travellers like criminals: Tourism body
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SME Times News Bureau | 12 Jan, 2019
Exorbitant taxis and over-enthusiastic policemen, who are trigger-happy
penalising outstation vehicles, need to be reined in to salvage Goa's
image as a friendly and feasible tourist destination, a tourism body
official said.
Speaking to IANS on the sidelines of an event in
Panaji on Friday, Savio Messias, President of the Travel and Tourism
Association of Goa, said that the coastal state's inability to handle
the burgeoning garbage crisis had also led to Japanese, Finnish and
Danish tour operators pulling out of Goa, due to "safety and health
concerns".
"There is widespread indiscipline among taxi operators
and drivers, which is one of the main cause for driving away tourists
from Goa. Taxis are so unaffordable, that tourists prefer to travel by
their own cars, adding to stress on the road infrastructure," Messias
said.
Travel and tourism industry stakeholders over the last few
days have been discussing a sudden decline in Goa's tourism fortunes,
especially after the festive Christmas and New Year week, saw a steep
drop in footfalls.
Taxis in Goa are largely unregulated with no
fare meter system in place and private cab drivers have often been
accused of being aggressive as well as over-priced when it comes to
service.
The absence of app-based taxi services like Ola and Uber
have also compounded the problem, even as a state tourism ministry
endorsed app-based taxi service GoaMiles has never really taken off, due
to poor pricing patterns and unavailability, according to users.
While
broader issues like a steep Goods and Services Tax slab impacting the
price of hotel rooms, increase in unregistered rooms offered by online
portals, poor marketing strategy, have been identified as key reasons
for the drop, Messias also pointed out to basic flaws, like poor and
corrupt policing, which have impacted Goa's image as a welcoming tourism
destination.
"Police harassment is one of the most noticeable
things. Whether it is due to targets set to policemen by their superior
officers or government, we do not know. But it is so common to see cops
stopping and fining tourists travelling in cars with a Maharashtra or
Karnataka registration plates. In Goa, it appears that if you are a
tourist, then you are treated like criminal," Messias said.
Messias
also said, that Goa's international marketing strategy to promote the
coastal state as a tourism destination, left a lot to be desired and
blamed the tourism ministry for the mismanagement.
"The marketing
strategy at international travel mart is unprofessional and these
international visits are reduced to mere travel jaunts. The marketing
strategy has become a joke, with politicians and even officials from the
government's Public Works Department selling Goa as a destination on
these jaunts," Messias said.
Messias also said, that the state
government's figure of 7 lakh plus annual footfalls was inaccurate and
demanded that the Tourism Ministry should commission a survey to find
out the exact number of tourists visiting Goa every year.
"We do
not believe the figure. We have requested the government to carry out a
survey at all the borders, airlines, trains. We, as tourism and travel
industry stakeholders are willing to support this. We need to understand
the carrying capacity of Goa, before we make plans," Messias said.
The state's Tourism Ministry's inability to keep beaches and key tourist sites free of garbage has added to Goa's woe, he said.
"The
state is full of garbage and our beaches are filthy. We are losing a
lot of footfall because of this. Tourists don't want to come to Goa to
see garbage. Beach cleaning has been delayed due to infighting between
government departments for years. As a result Japanese, Finnish and
Danish operators have pulled out of Goa citing safety and health
concerns," he said.
Goa is one of the top beach and nightlife
tourism destinations in the country and last year tourism ministry
statistics revealed that more than seven million tourists visited the
coastal state, out of which half a million were foreign tourists.
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