It’s that time of the year again – when the rainclouds vanish, the shacks start coming up and charter flights bring in hordes of holidayers from across the world to our sandy, sunny beaches. The tourist season in Goa has kicked off well and proper with the first charter flights having landed earlier in the month. The Russians, the Kazakhs and the English have already started coming in and according to hoteliers and other members of the hospitality industry, the 2024-25 winter should work out as a bumper season.
Despite the war situation in West Asia and Ukraine, if foreign tourists are flying into Goa, it is indeed a heartening sign for Goa’s tourism industry.
Ernest Dias, the COO of Charters Sita, said that the season looked very promising and the number of Russian tourists would increase, with the Russian national airline Aeroflot starting flights to Goa. In addition a charter airline Air Azur will commence operations in November, flying in tourists from Russia. Flights from both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan will commence from the end of October. Polish tourists are supposed to get a flight once a week from Poland and their numbers should be double of last year. A majority of Russian tourists he said would stay for a period of 10 nights, but there were a few who would stay for 7 or 14 nights.
Sheikh Ismail, Senior VP of Concord Tours, another player in Goa’s charter business, said that flights had commenced from Moscow and Yekaterinburg on October 2. There were six flights every week bringing in about 1,050 tourists a week. Since there are direct flights from Tashkent, travellers from Moscow were also using that route. “Flights from Kazakhstan will start from October 26 and most tourists from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan preferred staying in four- and five-star hotels, for a minimum of seven nights, which can go up to14 to 21 nights. Last year we had around 23,800 passengers and I hope that the number will reach 30,000 this season,” added Ismail.
Egbert Dias, VP of Caper Travel Company, the third big travel operator in Goa, clarified that business would be good from CIS countries. With flights twice a week and each flight bringing in about 350 passengers, the numbers were already looking good. “And the number of flights are going to go up from December,” Dias revealed.
The British also make up a sizeable chunk of the tourists coming into Goa. Nahush Bargi, the GM of Le Passage, which brings in tourists from the UK, said that there were four flights from the island nation every week, with two flights from Manchester and two from Gatwick. The capacity was around 1,200 tourists every week. He said last year they had achieved almost 90 per cent of that capacity and expected the same
this year.
Goa’s tourism season that generally stretches from October to April suffered a huge setback during the COVID years, when foreign tourist numbers slowed to a trickle, with an average of 25,000-30,000 tourists coming in during 2021 and 2022. This was far lower than the 2019 season, when 9.4 lakh foreigners holidayed in Goa. It was the domestic tourist from other parts of the country that kept the business going in that period. But now that holiday travel is back to normal, the number of foreigners has also been picking up since last year. This year promises to be a bumper season for the tourism industry.