PANAJI: The late surge in the arrival of tourists, both domestic as well as foreign, in the state has given the tourism industry a reason to smile and the number of tourists arriving in Goa is likely to match the figures of the previous year.

Though the tourism season began on a low note, the arrival of tourists from all quarters began to pick up as the season progressed, with the economy showing signs of recovery. The state is likely to receive as many as 22 lakh domestic tourists during the current season and could even surpass the figures given the present trend of tourist arrival particularly the domestic, said the director of Tourism, Mr Swapnil Naik.
He said that the decision of state government to promote the state as a tourist destination has paid off in a big way as many domestic tourists have been flocking to the state, of late. He said that most of the hotels in Goa have been showing signs of full houses. “At the moment we have large number of tourists in Goa,” said Mr Naik.
The Tourism director said that despite a poor show in the beginning of the current tourist season, the arrival of charter flights in the state picked up gradually and as on April 17 as many as 592 flights arrived in the state bringing in around 1.36 lakh foreign tourists. He also said with an increase in the number of scheduled flights from various countries a large number of foreign tourists chose to come to the state.
He went on to add that given the present trend the number of
charter flights is likely to match last year’s figures of 623 flights and the number of foreign tourists would also match the previous year’s figures of 3.20 lakh.
The Russians numbering nearly 58,000 have overtaken British as the largest number of tourists to arrive in Goa during the current season and the number of Russian tourists in the state is likely to reach 60,000. The Russians at the moment comprise 37 per cent of foreign tourists who arrived in the state, he said.  The number of British tourists is just over 52,000 this year so far, said Mr Naik adding that there has been a big fall in the number of tourists arriving from United Kingdom and Germany this season. The number of German tourists so far has been just 4,563. The state also received 746 tourists from Iran for the first time in its tourism history. These tourists from Iran came by four flights in last month.
The Tourism director said that the state needed to vigorously promote itself all over to attract more tourists, adding that the process of holding road shows in various parts of the country was recently undertaken by tourism department officials in Guwahati (Assam), Shillong (Meghalaya), Siliguri (West Bengal) and Gangtok (Sikkim).
He said that such promotions help the state to have a large number of tourists and that the recent efforts by tourism officials evoked good response from tour operators in the four important destinations in the Northeast. He said that the state would benefit from this campaign now that there was much better air and rail connectivity to these destinations.