Goa expecting an influx of visitors this monsoon

Panaji: Buoyed by 55 per cent growth in tourist inflow during monsoon last year, the Goa Tourism department is expecting impressive footfalls in the state during this rainy season too.

The Tourism department has published this surge of tourists in 2016 between June and September, which was earlier tagged as off or lean season by the industry.

“With aggressive marketing and promotion, monsoons in Goa which used to be the off-season has now turned into an on-season,” State Tourism Director Menino D Souza told PTI today.

He said the spurt in tourist arrivals began with a 10-12 per cent growth registered in the last decade till 2013. Now it is gradually on an incline with 18 percent growth in 2014, to 23 per cent in 2015 and 55 per cent in 2016 for the period between June and September.

Goa has been famous worldwide and also across the country as a beach destination.

The state has a 105-kilometre-long beach stretch which has been attracting lakhs of visitors, both domestic and foreign, for last several decades.

D Souza said the growth in monsoon tourism has got a boost as hotels continue to offer special packages and the number of monsoon activities have also increased. 

State run Goa Tourism Development Corporation has introduced activities like trekking, white water rafting, monsoon festivals, special monsoon cuisine, trips to picturesque locales, biking, waterfall visits and others to woo visitors, he said.

The introduction of new train services like Tejas and the Maharajah Express will also bring in more tourists from neighbouring states, he said.

Goa is also a hot spot for extended weekends and holidaying during that time is a popular trend among domestic tourists, the director said quoting a recent survey by a website which declared Goa as India s most popular monsoon travel destination among Indian travellers for 2017.