Sometimes the trash takes itself out

Goa's toxic relationship with tourism; what the influencers won't tell you, tourist deaths and more in this week's edition!

Hi folks,

Hello and welcome to yet another edition of my weekly newsletter. It’s a brand new year, and I’m back after a two-week hiatus to bring you the latest news roundup, analysis, and, of course, deep dives into what’s been happening in, around, and with Goa.

At the outset let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year, one which brings hope, happiness, and prosperity and one which brings more good news than bad. Here’s to many more interesting and fulfilling editions in the weeks ahead!

A lot has happened since we last ‘met.’ For one, the ‘notorious’ criminal Suleman Siddiqui Khan was re-arrested by the Goa Police, not surprisingly since the cops had made it a matter of prestige to have him rearrested (Yeh, izzat ka mamla tha), but not before he tried to drag several politicians down with him with the release of two videos. The state nearly had a Christmas without beef, and the Fatorpa temple committee decided and then revoked a decision to ban Muslims from setting up stalls at the temple fair.

In the midst of it all, Goa celebrated its 63rd Liberation Day with the usual promises to protect the state’s natural heritage, while barely a few days’ later, the Goa Chief Minister was at the table of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman seeking a 1,000 crore compensation package on account of “revenue loss” of having to preserve the Western Ghats, among other demands.

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Sunburn repeats

But before I get to the main story, I must make mention of the death of Karan Kashyap, a 26-year-old Delhi resident, who collapsed at the Sunburn EDM Music festival and died soon later of renal failure, among other complications, while the post mortem report revealed the presence of a cocktail of drugs in his system, including fentanyl, amphetamine, methamphetamine, along with alcohol. The final cause of death, though, is yet to be made public pending chemical analysis of the viscera. Sadly, though Kashyap’s death was only one of three tourists who died in Goa over the period—an Andhra tourist was killed after he got into a fight over ordering a meal beyond closing hours at a Goa beach shack, and another from Khed, Maharashtra drowned after the boat he was taking a trip in (along with more than 20 others) overturned, throwing them all into the sea.

All in all, it has been a dense few days that Goa has only just begun to recover from. I used the word recover quite deliberately, because that’s what Goa’s peak tourism has come to represent—an illness or disease that takes a toll on the state and its people—the kind of thing that necessitates a period of healing.

Which brings me to the main story for this week. -- Tourism. This is going to be a bit long, so hopefully you will stay with me until the end.

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Sometimes the trash takes itself out

Photo by Arun Prakash on Unsplash

Over the New Year, a few high-follower social media accounts went to town stating that Goa was “beyond empty” and that it was no longer a preferred tourism destination in the face of increased competition from destinations like Thailand and Sri Lanka that are both cheaper and offer better value in terms of quality of the overall experience.

Much has already been written about this both in the state as well as in the national media and, of course, on social media.

Quite predictably, the state government has hit back, with state tourism minister Rohan Khaunte vowing to expose the ‘paid influencers’ who he said were trying to market a rival destination in a different way. The Chief Minister too weighed in, in a bid to counter the narrative.

Which begs the question—several questions, actually—what really is going on?

Is this— as some have suggested—the trash taking itself out? The people who have sent Goa to the dogs are now complaining that Goa has gone to the dogs.

And who gets to call a tourism season a success? Do jam-packed nightclubs, restaurants, bumper-to-bumper traffic, beaches representing a Kumbh Mela, and having to ring in the New Year stuck in a traffic jam define a successful tourism season? Is that the kind of success that Goa even wants?

In all this, do Goans even get to have a say? And most of all, why now?

One way to frame it is to make this a debate in which on one side are entitled pricks who believe Goa should be rolling out the red carpet for them just because they are paying customers whom we supposedly depend upon and cannot do without, while on the other are indignant locals who’ve quite literally been saying they’ve had enough.

It is of course more than just that. So let me attempt to try and break it down for you.

How it began

It all began on November 5, when Twitter (now called X) user Ramanuj Mukherjee claimed that Goa was down in the dumps and cited CEIC data to show that “foreign tourists had abandoned Goa” in favour of Sri Lanka and that Indian tourists were “soon likely to ditch it as word spreads about the exploitation of tourists” while there are so many cheaper comparable locations abroad.”

“The anger is real,” he triumphantly said after his tweet quickly gained attention (and replies) from people complaining largely about high taxi fares, rude behaviour, etc.

But guess what? Goans are angry too, and our anger is real too! As it turns out, in the larger scheme of things, our anger doesn’t seem to matter much (or at all) at what tourism has done to our state. Much like how’ Israeli anger seems to mean a whole lot, but that of the Palestinians? Not so much.

Everyone seems to forget how barely a month before Ramanuj's tweet, the conversation was all about how Goa is suffering from overtourism. In many ways, it still is! Since then, another X user and activist, Deepika Bharadwaj (referred to earlier), with a similarly large following, shared a video of the Candolim-Calangute road to suggest that Goa was “really empty” this year, once again kicking up a storm.

Which brings us to the question…

Are Goa’s tourist arrival numbers really down this year?

Photo by alexey turenkov on Unsplash

The answer depends on whom you ask. Several hoteliers and other tourism businesses that I have spoken to have said that indeed numbers this year are lower than those experienced over the last two years.

In many ways, this was to be expected. 2022 and 2023 represented years of revenge travel that exploded after nearly two years of restrictions.

And with international travel yet to fully resume, domestic travellers had very few options to choose from and so came to Goa—in hordes. Those numbers were never going to be sustainable or desirable—not unlike what seasoned investors were saying when the stock markets hit their lifetime highs on September 27 last year. They have corrected quite a bit since then, but the good part is most keen observers have said this is a ‘healthy’ correction. The same could (and should) be said of Goa’s tourism.

On the other hand, if you go by the only data available so far, the picture isn’t quite the same. The Goa International Airport (Dabolim) has offered figures to suggest that it has received more passengers between December 20-31 last year than it did in 2023 despite losing several scheduled flights to Mopa between 2023 and 24.

Between December 20-31, Dabolim handled 1.20 lakh passengers as compared to 94,000 passengers for the same period in 2023. The ‘old’ airport handled 683 domestic flights and 27 international flights for the same period in 2024 as compared to the 559 domestic and 37 international flights in 2023.

Mopa Airport, for its part, claimed an overall 26.6% growth in passenger traffic in 2024 as compared to 2023.

The point being the truth is more nuanced than the influencers will have you believe. But don’t expect that you will hear it from them—as financial columnist Vivek Kaul often recounts in his Easynomics column: influencers tend to offer simplistic explanations with great confidence because “any nuance brings down the chances of going viral.”.

The foreigner question

While the aforementioned Ramanuj Mukherjee, as I have discussed before, used widely inaccurate figures to make his point about Goa’s tourism sector being in the dumps. However, the figures he cited do point to an overall trend of foreign tourists failing to return in the same numbers after Covid.

On closer examination, this too is more nuanced than the influencers would have you believe. For one foreign tourist, it began ‘abandoning’ Goa well before the pandemic struck.

The last direct charter operations between Denmark and Goa were in the 2010-11 season when an operator ran 14 flights, bringing 2188 tourists. 2010-11 was the last year for Swiss and French-based charters too, with 15 flights bringing 929 tourists from the two countries. Charters from the Netherlands and Poland ceased the following year in 2011-12, with 25 charters bringing 2,674 tourists from Poland that year and 32 flights bringing 1,994 tourists from Poland.

Germany continued to send flights until the 2013-14 season, with 19 flights bringing 4,105 tourists that year before failing to return the following year.

The last surviving Scandinavian airline, Finnair, continued to serve Goa with a twice-weekly charter flight between Helsinki and Goa but shut operations in 2019 after a 25-year run.

Since then, it’s only been Russians and Ukrainians who have been making up the foreign tourist arrivals in Goa, with arrivals from the UK being a distant third.

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Ukraine market has shut completely, knocking off Goa's second biggest source of foreign tourists in one fell swoop. New markets like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have since opened, but they do not bring in the kind of numbers that Ukraine once did.

The question is why? It can’t be, as many online have suggested, because Goa’s taxis are overcharging. Goa’s taxis have been overcharging since forever. To suggest that tourist numbers have dropped this year on account of a phenomenon that has always been around doesn’t quite add up.

It can’t be because Goa is expensive, because it still represents significant value for someone earning in a more powerful currency. Back in the day, the joke was how many British tourists in Goa were actually just using just “the dole” (a colloquial term for unemployment benefits) to fund their Goa holidays.

The more likely explanation is because Goa is no longer what it once was—it no longer represents a peaceful, laidback, sunny holiday destination that made it attractive in the first place. Deepti Kapoor’s lament that Goa is an idyll no more, forcing her to leave, is more than eight years old now.

Today Goa represents an overcrowded, unclean, and chaotic place, much like the rest of India, where you are likely to be stared at or worse. In other words, Goa is now receiving fewer foreign tourists because its tourist spots are now full of Indians—the same Indians who are complaining that Goa has gone to the dogs. A foreign tourist will undoubtedly find better value (and peace) elsewhere.

Is Goa expensive?

Which brings me to the other point that has often been raised on social media—that foreign destinations are cheaper and better. This is true—but again, it’s more nuanced than that. If you listen to this vlog by British motorcyclist and vlogger Freddie Dobbs, who visited Goa last year, he went on about how much value Goa represents. It makes sense because for someone earning in GBP, a little money will go a long way in a place with a weak currency like India.

In the same vein, someone earning in rupees will find ‘value’ in visiting countries further down the food chain (in terms of currency value) like Sri Lanka and Vietnam. It should have been obvious, but this argument is completely missing from the discourse.

More than that, prices—be it airfares to Goa or hotel prices—are a factor of demand and supply. Hotel prices continue to remain high because there continues to be demand for them; the same goes for airfares, which, though they have corrected, have remained high despite a second airport allowing for more flights to and from the state, pointing to persistent demand.

Why is going to Abu Dhabi for a Coldplay concert nearly the same cost as the one in India? Why do taxis in Goa charge high prices? Because they can and because everyone else is doing it. How are they different from an Ahmedabad hotelier who has jacked up room rates for the Coldplay weekend? (I will not say more here because the taxi issue deserves a special edition in itself, hopefully soon).

Besides Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, etc., have other advantages that Goa does not have—cleaner beaches, for one, that in part are due to how the locals maintain the beaches and also due to geophysical factors like shallow seas, which mean calmer waters and thus less churning of sediment, besides being closer to the equator entails a ‘more tropical’ climate, and lastly being able to ‘filter’ visitors through border and passport checks.

There’s one other advantage these destinations have. You almost never see garbage lying about on the streets. The reason? A lot of people have theories, but the one I found the most believable is because there is no caste system—the people there don’t expect that cleaning is a job to be left to someone else to clean up after they leave. Why are Goa’s once pristine beaches now dirty? You don’t have to go far to look for an answer.

How long will the honeymoon last?

How long till the locals of these alternative destinations start hating on Indians much like Goa did? Not long, I’m guessing.

It’s no secret that Indians, especially in largely male groups, are among the most obnoxious travellers wherever we go—noisy, loud, boorish, and entitled. There’s a reputation that precedes us wherever we go. A friend, who currently lives in Jakarta, mentioned that Indians as a group of tourists are usually heard before they are seen, and among groups of tourists are the ones considered to be wary of.

Travelling in a subway (or metro) in a foreign nation, and you hear someone watching a video on speakerphone? Chances are it will be an Indian—completely oblivious to the discomfort it causes to the people around him.

All this isn’t to say Goa isn’t without its fair share of problems. Let’s start with...

How the government is actively killing tourism

This isn't’ about the old and tired argument about high taxes that the industry is facing. But more than that, it’s about how the Goa government has messed with the state’s vibe.

Remember the Arambol “hippie carnival” that used to be a fun-filled, colourful, free-for-all, spontaneous outpouring of creative expression organised by the foreigners who used to make Arambol home? Well, for the last three years or so, the government has been cracking down on it in order to promote their own ‘official’ staged, drab carnival, all so that they could please the ego of the local MLA, who was afraid the ‘independent’ carnival would outshine the ‘official’ one! They even arrested Zouzou, the main organiser, in a bid to kill the spirit.

And of course, there’s the issue of the unbridled construction and land conversion, which have completely changed Goa’s character, with fields and hills making way for malls, high-rises, and gated communities.

Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane even said as much by stating, “People come to Goa because they love Goa. People come to Goa because they feel that there is a lot of greenery and peace of mind…If you destroy Goa and you make Goa a city or a metro, people will not come to Goa. You have to save Goa for posterity...” Rane had said back in 2022 before proceeding to do exactly what he warned against. And there’s even more on the way.

And finally…

Let’s reclaim Goa

Brits, Germans, and Scandinavians all found in Goa a piece of untouched paradise—friendly, hospitable people with a strong sense of community and an active social space filled with music, dance (and beat shows), occasional merriment, and strong social bonds.

Since then, however, tourism in Goa resembles a system of looting in which Goa’s shared resources—our fields, rivers, hills, and beaches, things that attracted tourists to Goa in the first place—have been converted to commodities sold to the highest bidder—usually a builder or hotelier—to perpetuate a cycle of boom, bust, and quit, leaving the land bereft of everything that drew the extractors in the first place.

Rather than adding value for the state and its people, tourism has appeared to be not unlike Goa’s other major industry—mining—in which value is extracted for profits to be enjoyed elsewhere, all while the hollowed-out state is left to count the cost.

Tourists have taken over the city—we can’t visit our own beaches like we used to (for family picnics and evening walks). We can’t go to our favourite restaurants because of the milling, loud crowds and the overall deterioration in quality after the places became popular and smelt runaway success. Hell, for the last few decades, most Goans would step out of their own homes during the peak season (between Christmas and New Year’s Eve) only if they had to and that too with a sense of dread.

Think about it. When’s the last time you considered going to Britto’s or St. Anthony’s in Baga and countless others for a meal with family or friends? And would you even consider visiting Baga beach, once a favourite for family, school, and parish picnics? Local clubs, parishes, schools, and youth groups have been going to beaches in Maharashtra in search of picnic destinations, our own beaches rendered undesirable.

To that extent, this latest ‘crisis’ that Goa is facing is indeed just an opportunity. An opportunity for us to reclaim our state and redefine its tourism and redefine its character, one in which ‘less is more.’ Let’s bring in the right kind of events and the right kind of crowd and, most importantly, the kind of tourism that does not displace us, keeping us locked in our homes with windows shuttered to keep the ‘tourism’ out.

There have been opportunities in the past that haven’t been taken. Will this time be different? (I hardly think so).

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You, of course, don’t have to agree with me (respectfully or otherwise). If you do, or if you don’t do share your thoughts and as always, continue to help spread the word. Until next week then, Tchau!