Goa, the Unchanging Destination

Abstract

Goas tourism authorities want to revitalize their low-cost beach-focused tourism by orienting it towards product diversification. The adopted state tourism strapline of a “Go Goa: a perfect holiday destination” intends to be a part of an escape strategy from Goa’s historical ‘sin, sex, drugs and music’ image. While Goa as a tourism destination holds an enduring appeal of its enchanting touristscapes, dealing with image reformation continues to be a challenge especially when there is uncertainty, particularly amongst the targeted upmarket leisure tourists in relation to Goa’s historical negative image, the new developments and the increasing local’s hostility. A number of marketing and development strategies have been devised to resolve the image crisis; however study of impact of stereotype negative image on beach resort destination aiming to reform its image and extend its tourism lifecycle has been neglected. To address this issue, this paper specifies a Fault Lines Model that gain insight into Goa’s stereotype negative image and subsequently evaluates the challenges in Goa’s transition towards the image rejuvenation. As a conceptual paper, academic literature is further examined to create a multi-step conceptual framework that offers image reformation marketing solutions.

Keywords: Goa, Destination Image, Rejuvenation, Image Reformation, Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC)

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