Daman’s hospitality sector rues lack of support of tourism dept

SURAT: The watering hole in the Union Territory (UT) of Daman might be the popular weekend getaway for the tourists from the bordering Gujarat and Maharashtra state, but the locals depending on the tourism and the hoteliers rue lack of support from the tourism department.
Sources said that the tourism department of Daman is lying dormant from the last many years when it comes to creating facilities to increase the tourist flow.It is required that the Daman administration has to relook at its over-dependence on the tourists from Gujarat and Maharashtra and try to attract tourists from abroad and other parts of the country.
Office-bearers in the Daman’s hotel industry are crying foul over the non-cooperation from the tourism department. The tourism officials are not conducting regular survey on the number of tourist arrivals on monthly basis. The website of the tourism department is not updated and that the information regarding the tourist attractions are vaguely displayed.
But if the industry has come to a realisation, however, late it may be, the tourism department doesn’t appear to be quite ready to accept about the state-of-affairs in the tourism sector. The tourism officials keep talking about the tourist arrivals rising during the Christmas to New Year week. That is expected to happen. What the department has to worry about is what will happen after the New Year. Will the tourists keep coming?
For the past few decades, Daman has been selling its beaches to the tourists, but doing nothing to protect them or even keep them clean. Voices that predicted that tourism would one day take a hit have been ignored. Even today, when the tourism industry is finding it difficult to sustain the tourist flow, except for offering them lower priced liquor, the tourism department refuses to wake up to the situation.
“There is a vacuum in the tourism department. The officials are not worried on initiating measures to increase tourist flow. They are even not ready to share the figures on tourist arrivals, because the surveys are not done on regular basis. Daman has sustained only because of its proximity to Gujarat and Maharashtra and the lower priced liquor,” said an office-bearer of Daman’s hospitality sector.