The surprising metrics of Goa's tourism boom led by traffic, villas and paneer

You are stuck at a junction in Goa. This is common during the regular November-March tourist season, but this used to be uncommon during the monsoons. Yet here you are, stuck in a light rain and, worse, next to a sewage tanker trailing its unmistakable odour.

The vehicles jammed in all directions include many with out-of-state licence plates, particularly TS (or more up-to-date TG) from Telangana. Among the local cars is a taxi SUV crammed with a family of tourists, all wearing clothes cut from the same vibrantly floral fabric-men's shirts, women's frocks, even an old lady's sari. Nothing is moving so should you get out and stretch your legs, maybe buy a paneer tikka roll from the cart on the corner, or some flowers from a shop with blossoms in buckets?

This could be a weekend scene in several parts of Goa just now. The monsoons used to be when tourism ended. Beach shacks were brought down, restaurants closed their doors and staff went home to their villages or looked for non-season jobs. Resorts tried to minimise losses with super-discounted packages and the state government tried to promote what was called, rather cringingly, rain-drop tourism, with talk about waterfalls and lakes.


Also read: Goa received more than 46 lakh tourists in first five months of this year

It'S Raining Tourists

Monsoon tourism really seems to be taking off now for reasons more linked to West Asia than established tourism efforts. The ongoing hostilities have ruined the Gulf as a holiday destination while its influence on the plummeting rupee has made other foreign trips painfully expensive. Goa has always been an easy option for quick, last-minute domestic tourism. Many restaurants have realised that the costs of closing and reopening, particularly hiring and retraining staff, are more than those of staying open, even with losses, through the monsoons. Ever since Covid, there have also been more permanent residents which help with demand, especially for food delivery.

Much of this change isn't captured in the standard metrics for tourism, which focus on flights and hotel room occupancy. A recent report showed a sharp seesaw, with a historic high of 18.18 lakh air passengers to Goa in May, most of them domestic, followed by a steep decline in June to 4.56 lakh, a 19.4% decline from the figures for June 2025.

This doesn't take into account the large number of tourists arriving in other ways. The Konkan Railways' monsoon services are particularly popular because they offer a spectacular glimpse of the Dudhsagar waterfalls, with spray often reaching the trains. The busloads of passengers that drive down from the west coast have resulted in Calangute becoming a mini-Gujarat, with pure vegetarian restaurants offering regional Gujarati food. Many regular tourists have realised that the best solution for Goa's soaring taxi rates is simply to drive your own car down, particularly if you come from close-by states like Karnataka and Telangana.

This is where Goa's traffic jam comes in.

Other Metrics

When regular indicators are ineffective people start looking at other metrics, even if they are more anecdotal than statistical. One well-known example is the Lipstick Effect, first advanced by cosmetics tycoon Leonard Lauder in 2008 when he noted that his company Estee Lauder's lipstick sales rose after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lauder's theory was that when people were anticipating bad times, they switched expensive indulgences, like fashion wear, for smaller ones, like cosmetics. And so rising lipstick sales could indicate a coming recession better than government data which would take time to show a fall in economic activity-and could, quite likely, be massaged by governments to minimise bad news.

Another unusual indicator is cardboard box production, where rising sales are correlated with rising consumer purchases of the products it is used for packing. The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis now tracks "corrugated and solid fiber box manufacturing". The consulting firm Accenture has tracked pet services (grooming, boarding, pet sitting) as a sign of economic confidence since the high costs associated with pet ownership mean that few will adopt pets in a recession. The seeming anomaly here is the Covid years when need for companionship at home meant that people adopted even though they were losing jobs-but then, when the pandemic ended, the rates of pet abandonment sadly soared. Geographers now use lighting at night, easily captured from satellite images, for literally illuminating insights into geographic distribution of economic activity.

The traffic jam scenario brings together several unusual markers for tourism activity in Goa. Non-state licence plates obviously indicate cars being driven into Goa, though some of them will belong to non-Goan residents who haven't changed their plates. Goa offers a huge diversity of outside licence plates, but some states like KA (Karnataka), MH (Maharashtra) and, above all, TS/TG (Telangana) predominate.

Biryani on the Mandovi

A hospitality professional says that the casino boats on the Mandovi river are seeing a surge in customers from Hyderabad, and their Telugu food offerings have increased. It can't be a coincidence then that Telugu food, which can be hard to find outside Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, is relatively well represented in north Goa now with restaurants like House of Telugu and Minapattu (Vagator), Trails of Taste (Anjuna) and Mana Andhra Ruchulu, Bhimavaram Vari Telugu Ruchulu and Royal Telugu Ruchulu (Calangute).

Aggregated hotel occupancy rates for May and June this year aren't yet available, but one factor is making this an increasingly inadequate indicator. Non-hotel options have been increasing rapidly, whether classified as homestays, villa rentals, or just short-term rentals. Family or friends who come to Goa often find renting two-three villas a better option than paying for many hotel rooms. Villas also come with more freedom from hotel surveillance and rules, and villa management companies can provide many of the services that hotels offer. Builders of villa clusters have now set up concierge companies that will maintain villas for those buying them as second homes and also manage short-term rentals so that the cost of their investment can be recouped.

Global villa-ge

These short-term rentals currently fly under the radar of most hospitality data collection, but one website that offers an indication is Airroi.com, which collates Airbnb listings and revenue internationally. Its top 100 markets in India by active listings oddly lists Goan villages alongside major cities: Bengaluru, for example, leads with 3,282 listings, and Candolim is the highest listing for Goa, with 1,188 listings. Four roughly contiguous villages in north Goa-Candolim, Calangute, Arpora and Anjuna -feature in the top 30, and their combined listings come to 2,945 properties, which puts them at No. 3 on the list, ahead of New Delhi.

In total, 21 Indian locations on Airroi.com's list are in Goa, giving a total of 6,781 short-term rental locations. The website also lists locations by revenue and this is even more startling: 15 of the 20 most profitable short-term rental locations are in Goa, with Assagao topping the list with an average monthly revenue of $1,243 and a 32.9% occupancy. No. 2 is Badem, a village next to Assagao, with an average monthly revenue of $1,182. The figures may be even higher since some really premium properties only offer direct bookings, not through sites like Airbnb.

Follow the Sewage Tanker

Assagao, like many Goan villages, does not have sewage lines since most villagers have septic tanks. Builders of new villas typically skimp on providing adequate septic tanks or sewage treatment plants, preferring instead to hire sewage tankers to suck up the waste two or three times a week, depending on the level of occupancy.

This is then taken to sewage treatment plants, though it is often alleged that tankers discharge the waste in mangroves and secluded river locations. Whatever the truth of that, this does make the movements of sewage tankers one way to track occupancy rates in short-term rental properties-it is literally data that can't be flushed away!

Other indicators are perhaps less impactful, though more visible. Flower shops are one of the less noted signs of gentrification. Around 20 years back, if you wanted flowers you had to head to a large market, like Mapusa's, where flowers were mostly available as garlands for temples or wreaths for churches. Today, tourist locations like Anjuna have multiple shops selling expensive flowers grown out of the state, though Goan farmers are also now switching from rice and vegetables to more high-value crops like orchids and sunflowers.

Cut From The Same Cloth

Groups of tourists wearing clothes of the same fabric is a small, but established part of mass tourism. One practical argument is that it helps large groups remain cohesive in crowded locations, but it's mostly just a fun way to signal a collective vacation. Corporate offsites, a rapidly growing business in Goa, also use themed shirts as a way for office groups to relax. There are clothing websites that cater to this market, offering coordinated wear for groups ranging from couples ("Twinning is Winning") to large family or friend groups.

Goa's cuisine never featured dairy products in any major way, but now paneer is inescapable. It shows the changing nature of domestic tourism. In the past, visitors to Goa, whether Indian or foreign, eagerly consumed the abundant seafood, pork and other meats on offer in the state. Most still do, but the prevalence of paneer on most menus signals the importance of domestic vegetarian tourists who view it as their desired protein.

Paneer usually appears in the standard north Indian dishes, but some places now offer a Goan-style paneer cafreal! You can get paneer pizzas, paneer momos, Thai fried paneer and a van outside Mapusa offers paneer shawarma. Perhaps paneer on menus could become the best unusual indicator of the spending power of Indian tourists.