NAUTICAL TOURISM Subhakar Rao
NAUTICAL TOURISMSubhakar Rao
Nautical tourism is all about enjoying activities like sailing and boating on a vacation. The concept is gaining lot of popularity in Europe and America. As tourists are looking for new and exciting ways to enjoy on their holidays - nautical tourism is a great idea to cater to these discerning tourists.
Why GOA forNautical Tourism?
Just have a look at the map of Goa andthe number of beaches in the state. Potentiallyall these beaches are great business opportunitiesto develop nautical tourism.
With government’s assistance these beaches canhave small marinas as a depot for yachts, boats and other water vehicles for tourists with all the necessary facilities.
Currently, we have mostly water sports as offerings to tourists.We can here provide yacht charter, sailing, and latest jet skiingas new and exciting tourism offerings.
As per the provisional report issued by Goa Tourism in 2013, Goa witnessed around 26-27 lakh domestic and around 5 lakh foreign tourists. Together, this put the total numbers30 lakh tourists in a year.
Even if someone try to capture 5% of this tourist inflow withNautical tourism, that’s a cool 150000 tourist roughly. Meanwhile,apart from the regular beaches, nightlife, DJ parties – this will takeGoa to the next level as the top tourist destination, not only in India but in the world as well.
The potential
New Opportunity AreasIn the recently concluded CII Conference on Goa Nautical Tourism, I have emphasized on many untapped potentials of Goa which we can include in our new tourism offerings.
For example, Goa has stunning backwaters which can be developed on tourism lines. There are already some players in this field offering river cruise to tourists, but it can be enhanced to completely new levels with modern luxurious boats.
Goan Backwaters
Current river cruise, backwater packages are mostly conducted on Old boats which were mainly built forTransportation and ferrying purposes.
With new boats, we can bring into recreational activities like boating on the backwaters, fishing activities which will be more entertaining and exciting for the tourists.
Yacht Charters
Yacht Charter is one area where we can become game changer if we play our cards right. Yacht Charters need not be limited to morning cruise, sunset cruise or romantic cruise. By brining the modern yachts we can actually serve luxury yacht charter resorts where they can stay and cruise on the charter for two – three days. So it will not limited to just mere cruising for few hours but an ideal weekend retreat.
Water SportsMake the tourists spoilt for choice when it comes to water sports. We have 36 boating options for tourists, and we are going to add many more. Boats not only which you can row, pedal or ride. But boats with which you can play, float and do something really exciting.
This kind of offerings are bound to take Goa’s Tourism to the next level.
THANK YOU!