Just as tourists have started to trickle into Goa over the last few weeks, Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar on Monday warned inbound tourists against reserving their stay in unregistered hotels, bed and breakfast facilities and villas.
Ajgaonkar also said that his Ministry would soon be issuing notices to such unregistered facilities soon to bring them under the ambit of regulation.
"We will be taking strict action going ahead. Only a hotel registered with the Tourism Department will be allowed to accept bookings," Ajgaonkar said.
"And tourists should only book hotels or other facilities approved by the department," he also said.
The Tourism Ministry has previously maintained that a proliferation of houses and apartments put out on rent through room aggregator apps, as well as unregistered villas and hotels were responsible for leakages in revenue as far as the tourism sector is concerned.
Ajgaonkar said that while the official count of tourists visiting the state in 2019 was nearly 8 million, nearly four million more tourists were put up at such unregistered hotels and therefore unaccounted for.
He also said that his Ministry had initiated a move to issue notices to such unregistered hotels.
"We have issued notices. Action is on," he said.
The Tourism Minister also said the Goa government was in the process of putting together a marketing blitz in order to attract visitors to Goa, in wake of the fact that Goa was likely to complete 100 per cent coverage of both Covid vaccine doses by the end of this month.
"We are preparing a media plan and advertising (campaign) we will announce that now. We want good tourists to come to Goa," he said, adding that music festivals would also be allowed in the state during the festive season of Christmas and New Year, with complete observance of the Covid SOPs.
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Published 04 October 2021, 15:17 IST