<As the ICAO itself said in its "draft final report" (to use NT'scharacterisation) "it is of utmost imprtance for the Government of Goa toestablish an airport development strategy " for Mopa which is win-win forboth the airports, given **"the small amount of airport traffic"** of the state. This is what GOG needs to be elaborating on, thoughtfully. Instead it isplaying the same old tune of "Mopa will be able to offer the facilitiesavailable at other international airports which Dabolim has been unable tooffer due to space constraints". .[self]
In a meeting with a Goa University faculty a short while ago (in some other connection) I heard a rather bewildering take on this. He said that the plan is to divert international traffic from Mumbai to Mopa! To my knowledge, there has been no hint of that so far anywhere. The ICAO report also does not suggest this though there may be some reference to (surface) traffic to/from mofussil towns like Ratnagiri, Sangli and Kolhapur in Maharashtra and Hubli, Dharwad and Belgaum in Karnataka. I said that if what he said was true then Goa was right in arguing that Mopa would benefit Maharashtra more. Anyway, it may be advisable to keep a weather eye on any moves to beef up Mopa traffic in the way the GU prof mentioned. The NT editorial discussed yesterday had a long discussion of tourism: <Tourism represents 10.2 per cent of the World's GDP and 4.8 per cent of India's. For Goa, tourist expenditures alone were estimated to represent 2.5 per cent of the state's GDP. The Tourism Master Plan also indicated that foreign tourists arriving by air spend as much as 5 times the average amount compared to domestic tourists. With the growth of the number of tourist lodgings average tourist expenditures are likely to rise faster than average prices. Nonetheless, the reports underlines, that by beginning 2014, expenditures of foreign arrivals will rise to 6.5 per cent and to 7 per cent by 2024 as hotels and other tourist facilities refurbish to attract up market travellers.> How big a boost to foreign tourism is Mopa likely to give and will it be as a result of any diversion from Mumbai? Let's stay glued to those Mopa project radar screens and holler if there is any strange blip -- for Dabolim's sake.
