Europe freezes,Goa feels the chill in peak season

The freeze in Europe is hurting Goa this holiday season.

The freeze in Europe is hurting Goa this holiday season. Goa,which sees maximum flow of foreign tourists and packed bookings during December 15-31 due to Christmas and New Year,is currently witnessing low to medium occupancy at many of its hotels,according to senior officials from the hospitality industry.

This is because a large number of chartered flights from Europe,especially UK and Russia,have been either cancelled or rescheduled due to bad weather. A whole lot of advance bookings have fallen through because of this.

E Krishnan,chief accountant at the Majorda Beach Resort,says that from a confirmed 80 per cent booking at his 120-room hotel every year they are now down to being just 50 per cent full. The foreign tourists have just not come. There are a lot of rooms available all over Goa this season which is very unusual. First it was the recession,now its the weather. We are now even open to slashing the rates,but there are hardly any takers, he says.

Parag Mudgal,a businessman from Pune who is just back from a four-day stay in Goa,confirms the vacancies. We had prior booking but reached the hotel at 8 pm instead of 1 pm. However,I was pleasantly surprised to find that our rooms were still there despite this being the peak season. Later,I discovered that not just ours but quite a few other hotels too had rooms available for walk-ins,which is very rare in Goa at this time.

Every year,Goa sees about four lakh foreign tourists and 21 lakh domestic tourists,according to Gaurish Dhond,president of Travel and Tourism Association of Goa.

Samar Mitbunder,who looks after Thomas Cook chartered flight operations in Goa,admits that the number of chartered flights coming into Goa have been affected,but puts the blame more on the new restrictive visa policies rather than bad weather.

Ralph DSouza,spokesperson for Travel and Tourism Association of Goa,seconds this. He says that Goa had the maximum number of repeat UK tourists in the world; that has decreased over the years due to the new visa rules that disallows people from staying for more than three months at a stretch despite a long-stay visa.

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Tourism Director Swapnil Naik says that in the peak tourist season between October and March,Goa gets 700-800 chartered flights. Of this,244 had landed by December 18. He blames the general impression that hotel rates rise steeply during this season and the fact that Europe is not fully out of recession for the lower footfalls this year.

Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) Chairman Shyam Satardekar concedes that there has been a problem with bookings since the past week because of non-arrival of many of the chartered flights. But the situation has improved now and we expect the occupancy rates everywhere to go up by New Years Eve, he says. According to him,there are about 44,000 beds in Goa available for tourists,of which around 500 are owned by GTDC. Our occupancy is almost 100 per cent as we do not depend too much on chartered flight guests.

Even as all the stakeholders in the business of Goa tourism admit a 10 to 15 per cent decline in the number of foreign tourists this season,they are unanimous in their optimism as far as domestic tourists are concerned. The number of domestic tourists have gone up substantially and even if some hotels have vacant rooms due to cancellations we are confident they will be filled by domestic tourists before long, says Satardekar.