One of the main reasons why Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) can’t give a call to hoteliers to boycott online travel agents (OTAs) even when such agents charge really high commissions is that the unregistered hotels may not support TTAG if it were to do so.
In other words, unregistered hotels are holding registered hotels to ransom in this case. In this fiercely competitive industry, registered hotels follow laws, pay taxes but can’t unite together and take a stance against some of the unfair trade practices of OTAs because unregistered hotels, which are illegal and don’t even pay taxes, may not support them.
This is really an unfair situation for registered hotels. To deal with this issue, it is necessary that the Tourism Department must crackdown on all the unregistered hotels in the state.
For a state as small as Goa, it shouldn’t be even difficult to have field officers figure where all the unregistered hotels are located and once that is done they must be told to shut their shop immediately and follow the rules.
The fact of the matter is that OTAs ask hoteliers to pay as high as 35% commission of the tariff amount. After paying such a commission, hoteliers have to pay all their bills, taxes and etc, which makes it very tough for them to make a profit.
The situation in many other parts of India is pretty much the same. Where the difference exists is in some cases the hoteliers have come together and taken a tough stance against OTAs. For example: in Ahmedabad, hoteliers had boycotted online booking portals recently for their unfair trade practices.
Unfortunately, that is not possible in Goa because here unregistered hotels have proliferated to such an extent that they dominate the trade in certain parts of the state.
If TTAG along with registered hotels even begins to negotiate with OTAs, unregistered hotels may still end up paying high commissions to OTAs to get business. This makes it very tough for TTAG to do much in this case.
This is where the State Government through Tourism Department must act like a strict administrator and tell all the unregistered hotels to either fall in line and follow rules or shut down with immediate effect.
Tourism Minister Manohar ‘Babu’ Azgaonkar should take initiative in this case and bring all the genuine stakeholders, hoteliers, taxi owners, shack operators, restaurant owners and MLAs from beach belt together and discuss how the unregistered hotels should be dealt with.
Everyone knows that the ongoing tourism season has seen much lesser number of tourists than expected. To bring some order in the tourism trade, it is high time that the Tourism Department starts a crackdown on unregistered hotels.
