Goa on global promotion drive

With international roadshows planned for leading source markets in 2018, Goa is going all out to promote itself as a favourable destination. The state is upgrading its tourism facilities, exploring newer products and supporting travel trade by offering free participation space at its exhibition stall.

TT Bureau

In 2017, Goa received as many as 7,785,693 tourists out of whom 6,895,234 were domestic tourists while the remaining 8,90,459 were international tourists, informed Deepak Narvekar, Senior
Manager—Marketing, Goa Tourism Development Corporation. “With the new Tourism Minister Manohar Azgaonkkar and GTDC Chairman Nilesh Cabral, we are exploring new tourism products in various parts of Goa. We have received tremendous response for activities like hot air balloon and introduction of hop-on hop-off buses. Water sports have been given more importance and public utility services are also being introduced at various beaches in Goa. Soon, light and sound shows will be introduced at Fort Aguada with ropeways from Panjim to Reis Magos Fort are also expected to be operational soon,” says Narvekar. The state is also projecting itself as a wedding destination given the large number of five-star deluxe properties.

“For the domestic tourism segment, we are targeting the Northeast and for inbound tourists, we are looking at GCC countries”

He further informs that Russia is the largest international source market for Goa followed by UK, Germany and other European countries. In terms of domestic market, tourists from West Bengal are quite frequent travellers. Other states contributing to Goa’s tourist numbers include Maharashtra, Karnataka, Northeast, Delhi, etc. He adds, “For the domestic tourism segment, we are targeting states in the Northeast and for inbound tourists, we are looking at GCC countries like Israel, Jordan and other markets like Australia, New Zealand, St Petersburg, etc. Roadshows have been planned in overseas markets to showcase Goa’s potential. We will conduct roadshows in Chicago, New York, Australia, Finland, Denmark, Russia and Lithuania in May and June. Most of these
shows will be led by Azgaonkkar, Cabral, Dharmendra Sharma, Principal Secretary—Tourism, Government of Goa; Menino D’Souza, Director — Tourism, Government of Goa and Nikhil Desai, MD, GTDC.”

Narvekar further informs that GTDC has been appointed as the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Cell whereby infrastructure projects will be undertaken by GTDC for the Government of Goa. Talking about the support offered to the travel trade, Narvekar says, “We are offering free participation and exhibition space to travel agents in all our stalls. They have to be a member of Travel Trade Association of Goa (TTAG), fill a form and based on space availability, they can participate with us.”