Dear readers The above article published in The Guardian/The Observer UK (August 2013) touched on how Goa was working on ridding itself of budget tourists and moving towards attracting a more affluent tourist who will be spending a lot more rupees wining, dining and enjoying our Goa sunset.
What our people in Goa working towards this need to understand that they have a long way to go and should grasp that hosts need to provide paying guests more than five star facilities to entice them to come back to Goa from far away places. Recently I was watching a TV programme on the busiest hotel in the world, the Venetian Palazzo (7,000 rooms), based in Las Vegas. It was interesting that all the employees of the hotel had to keep everything in complete order as they knew that if they did not, their guests would just go and stay in another hotel, it was as simple as that. The net result of this would be that their hotel would shut down and they would be lose their jobs. This attitude to work and keeping everything in order for the guest is sadly not the case in all parts of Goa. Speaking on behalf of myself and my wife who are non-white British of Goan origin, many a time we have gone for meals in Goa and are shortchanged. Either the dishes we wish to order are not available, or changed by the waiter without our knowledge, even sometimes we are not even served some of the dishes ordered but charged for them. Worse still, we cannot be sure that the food is fresh and will not lead to food poisoning requiring expensive hospital care. The above article also recorded some comments made by the general secretary of shack owners implying that pensioners from Britain were not of economic benefit to shacks using their sun beds purchasing a bottle of water and staying all day. These pensioners claim to be using their heating allowance to enjoy the free heat of Goa's natural sunshine and harvest of the ocean. The general secretary of the shack owners and all those managing the hospitality industry should give the Goa Tourism Department a hand and read this book "The Magic of Thinking Big" by David J. Schwartz (ISBN No 0-671-85421-6). In particular to note: Quote from page 101 of the book: How much is a customer worth? A department store executive was addressing a conference of merchandise managers. She was saying "I may be a little old fashioned, but I belong to the school that believes the best way to get customers to come back is to give them friendly, courteous service. One day I was walking through our store when I overheard a sales person arguing with a customer. The customer left in quite a huff. Afterwards, the sales person said to another "I'm not going to let a $1.98 customer take up all my time and make me take the store apart trying to find him what he wants. He's simply not worth it". "I walked away, " the executive continued, "but I couldn't get that remark out of my mind. It is pretty serious, I thought, when our sales people think of customers as being in the $1.98 category. I decided right then that this concept must be changed. When I got back to my office, I call our research director and asked him to find out how much the average customer spent in our store last year. The figure he came up with surprised even me. According to our research director's careful calculation, the typical customer spent $362 in our establishment. "The next thing I did was call a meeting of all supervisory personnel, and explain the incident to them. Then I showed them what a customer is really worth. Once I got these people to see that a customer is not to be valued on a single sale but rather on an annual basis, customer service definitely improved." The point made by the retailing executive applies to any kind of business. It's repeat business that makes the profit. Often, there's no profit at all on the first several sales. Look at the potential expenditures of the customers, not just what they buy today. Putting a big value on customers is what converts them into big, regular patrons. Attaching little value to customers sends them elsewhere. Unquote In Breadline Britain the average heating bill for a small house to pay for gas and electric is about GBP 150 (approximately Fifteen thousand rupees) per month. In the early 1980s the London area recorded over 4,000 pensioner deaths due to people not being able to afford to heat their homes and the heating allowance was brought in to address this issue and save lives. The astute European and Indian pensioner used common sense and worked out that coming to Goa or another warmer place would benefit their lifestyle and deny the greedy gas and electric companies money that could otherwise be used to holiday. Those pensioners and the unemployed of various ethnic groups from the UK who are unable to go abroad for the winter months to a warmer climate for whatever reason, it is not uncommon to see them sitting in the library, the pub, covered shopping malls, anywhere that is warm without the need to spend money to heat their homes. To me the season in Goa starting in November was when fish was plentiful. Today the season means something else, Goa attracts predatory thinking waiting to fleece fellow human beings from colder countries coming to bask in the sunshine. It is good to see that the Goa authorities have noted tourist numbers dropping from Britain, if they are not to receive good treatment, they will use their common sense and go elsewhere. The Russians and others given time might do the same. Melvyn Fernandes Thornton Heath, Surrey, United Kingdom 18 January 2014
