To strengthen its image on the international arena, the tourism department ran an outdoor campaign at Times Square in New York, coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the USA.
While Goa has not made concerted efforts to woo US tourists, in the past decade, a few attempts were made to explore the distant market, but these did not meet with much success.
The campaign, a tourism official said, was launched as they want to fortify Goa’s image by aggressively promoting it as a wedding, health, spiritual, heritage, meetings, conferences, and incentives (MICE), and adventure destination in addition to its beach tourism model, which so far has been its USP.
“We thought that conducting the campaign during the PM’s US visit would get us more eyeballs than otherwise,” said the tourism officer.
Tourism Minister of Goa, Rohan Khaunte said efforts are being made to explore options such as open skies agreements and collaborations with the sector to attract more international flights. To further establish itself as a top choice for travellers worldwide, Goa govt is aiming to implement targeted marketing campaigns, foster collaborations and partnerships with other countries.
Times Square, he said, is the most visited place in the world. “On a given day, 3.6 lakh people visit it, and on the busiest day, it has a pedestrian count of over 4.6 lakh,” he said. While footfalls from the US have been on the lower side, 2018 and 2019 saw a jump. The two years each had over 25,000 US travellers visiting Goa, though the num-bers dropped to 16,000 in 2020, the year Covid-19 derailed the world.
President of the Travel and Tourism Association (TTAG), Nilesh Shah, said that connectivity is what matters when trying a new destination. Distance being a big hurdle in pursuing the US market, there’s still scope to attract the NRIs who visit India, he added. “In the years to come, the connectivity will be sorted out. Until then, we can focus on NRIs.”
The department, he said, should focus on reviving its old markets which have established connectivity and which have brought maximum footfalls to Goa.
