Making Common Cause

With the tourism cake itself shrinking rapidly and the star resorts having kept themselves floating during the off-season by selling highly subsidised monsoon packages, Goa's big resorts seem to have finally seen the writing on the wall. "United we survive in the highly competitive market and divided we perish", says a prominent hotelier, commenting as if out of newly born wisdom.

For the first time, Goa's leading five star hotels and resorts have come together "to try and work together on marketing front as well as procurement side."

With the State's tourism on the down-hill, the hoteliers have been critical of the State government's inability to promote Goa as a destination in the right manner, apart from its inability to back the industry with adequate infrastructure.

" We fail to project Goa to the world. We lost the opportunity of having a visit of US President, Bill Clinton, to Goa during his high profile India visit. That is because the local government failed to lobby effectively for the visit when some ground work was on to have the President to have a one-day halt in Goa," says Capt. C. P. Nair of Leela Group bitterly. Capt. Nair believes that such high profile visits backed by print and electronic media coverage go a long way in projecting a destination to high spending tourists.

The new initiative by the five-star resorts comes in the wake of the apathy by the State government, say the industry insiders. Explaining the initiative, Hans-Georg Rohrbein, General Manager, Goa Marriott, told this writer recently in an informal chat, " the five-star resorts and hotels right from Cidade de Goa and Taj, Leela, Renaissance, Goa Marriott , and so on, have been trying to come together to see if we could do some marketing for ourselves and for this destination as a whole."

The "conclaves" assume significance due to the fact that the hitherto Goa's star resorts were seen as indulging in "price wars" among themselves.

Hans Georg argues, " what we have to realise is that we as hotels in Goa should try to compete with other destinations like Thailand, Bali, Caribbean islands, etc., instead of concentrating on competing with each other."

The general managers of prominent five-star resorts have had a couple of meetings already and some more were planned ahead. The idea was, apart from working together on the marketing side, they would also procure their things together. " We would see how we could buy things together so that one is assured of more choice, better pricing, better service and better product", said Hans Georg.

Hans who worked for around 11 years in destinations like Bermuda, Aruba, etc, before coming down to Goa felt that what Goa lacks primarily was " destination marketing done by a professional company". This could be done by all five-star and other resorts working together with government or without, he said. The second thing was to upgrade the infrastructure including special attention towards cleanliness, he added.

Despite several competitive advantages like its beaches, scenic beauty and absence of beggars and visible poverty, Goa tourism is stagnating and many hotels, specially the higher category ones, are suffering from low occupancies even during the high foreign tourist season from November to April. Goa today has close to 52 star hotels apart from a large number of tourist accommodation outlets in various other categories.

A memorandum submitted to the state chief minister Francisco Sardinha by the leading hoteliers in Goa here recently expressed these apprehensions and went on to sound a note of caution that the profile of foreign tourists arriving in Goa is changing and more and more low spending foreign tourists are visiting the coastal state. The memorandum called for a three-year moratorium on clearances for new hotel projects in the State.

Sunder Advani of Goa Rennaisance, who submitted the memorandum, has been quite outspoken about "the looming dangers."

Much to the annoyance of the industry, the State government's response came in the form of formation of yet another core group by including the representatives of hoteliers, travel trade, and the government to prepare a white paper on the grievances of the industry. The second tourism master plan has been lingering since 1997 awaiting finalisation of the third part which is supposed to contain concrete proposals. This too after spending a lot of money on Delhi-based consultants.

"Enough of consultants, fresh development plans and core-groups for tourism", says a visibly disenchanted Anju Timblo, Managing Director of Cidade Goa. She says that there is a definite need for a planned united approach to project Goa as a good and a safe destination. " It would be helpful to have a good planned combined ad-campaign" to achieve this purpose, she suggested.

S. V. Balram, the newly elected president of Goa Travel and Tourism Association, a body representing travel trade and hospitality sector, is more anxious about infrastructure development.

" We are concerned about the pathetic condition of power, water, roads," he said and pointed out that the GTTA has submitted a proposal to the State government which seeks topmost priority to environmental up-gradation in the coastal areas by inviting global tenders on BOOT basis. A long pending Rs.250 crores coastal infrastructure development project prepared by the state government to upgrade the sewage and water supply to the entire coast of North Goa is gathering dust in Delhi seeking external funding.

Since Goa now has several new five star hotels of international standards and more hotels are being approved in Goa in this category, Advani suggested that all the new applications for addition to room capacities should be frozen for at least three years as is done in many tourist areas where over capacity exists.

"Can the government do that", wondered Goa tourism minister Ms Victoria Fernandes and the director of tourism S S Kesh Kamat when asked by this writer for their response to the demand coming from some sections of the tourism industry.

The minister argued that the hoteliers who want to invest in Goa should know their economics better. Hans Georg fully agrees with this view . He feels that the arrival of the reputed international names could enhance the stature of the destination.

Looking at it from the State's revenue angle, Kesh Kamat agrees that the addition of more rooms will be counter productive as the existing higher category hotels have been reducing their tariffs over the years leading to a lower tax revenue for the State.

There is no doubt that since tourism has become a highly professional industry with all the developed and the developing centres competing for the tourist dollar, it is important to have a specific strategy coordinated with the help of the trade to sell Goa internationally.

"Since we need to attract high spending tourists, a professional group such as PATA of San Francisco should be requested to carry out a study of Goa's strengths and weaknesses", argues Advani. PATA has done the studies for Nepal, studied the needs of the German long haul market and such market research on tourism destinations, he argues.

The industry has suggested that Dabolim Airport should be open for both scheduled and charter flights seven days a week and around the clock.

Even as Goa's ministers and bureaucrats and others associated with State sponsored tourism continue to make merry at the foreign jaunts, those in the tourism industry are convinced that Goa has been overtaken by Kerala in its presence and visibility at World Tourism events such as ITB, World Travel Mart, etc., where major buyers of holiday travel destinations congregate.