Don’t be fuzzy about the definition of a tourist

A few years back, a harried mid-segment hotelier went about narrating his woes on the dwindling tourist numbers in Goa. After patiently lending him an ear, I interrupted and brought to his notice the healthy tourist numbers put out by the State’s tourism department.

A smug grin flashed across his face as he claimed how tourist data were being window-dressed to cover up the real picture. This window dressing, he said, entailed tinkering with the definition of the tourist and including migrant labours entering into the State as tourists.

Elaborating on his claim, he explained how Goa’s furious pace of development has seen massive inflow of labour from different States. They arrive into Goa on short-term contracts and keep returning to their native States at regular intervals.

This kind inter-State movement of migrant labour makes it easy for the data collators to include them as tourists. If the hotelier’s claims are to be believed, then this kind of data inferencing can skew the real picture of Goa’s tourism.

It also explains why hotels and other tourism-related businesses do not perform so well despite buoyant growth in tourist arrivals. It is, therefore, very imperative for the State tourism department to clearly define a tourist.  

The Goa government’s draft Goa Tourism Promotion and Management Bill, 2024 – expected to reshape and regularise the State’s tourism sector if it becomes law – defines a tourist as “a person who visits the State for any duration and for any purpose, including business or leisure but other than for employment”.

By including the people entering the State for the “purpose” of business, the bill has widened the definition of a tourist. This has raised many eyebrows. So, what is the globally accepted definition of a tourist?

The World Tourism Organization (WTO) defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".

By this definition, those arriving into the state for business purposes can be counted as tourists by data collators. Even inclusion of migrant labour should not pose a problem for them.

The trade representative body – Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) – does not agree with the description of a tourist by the WTO or the Goa government. In its response to draft Goa Tourism Promotion and Management Bill, 2024, it clearly states “a person visiting the State for the purpose of business cannot be called a tourist”.

It has requested the government to modify the definition “to safeguard the non-tourist, who may be affected by his inclusion within the definition of a tourist”. TTAG wants a person visiting the state as member of a mice (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) group to be separated from businessmen entering the State for “pure business”.    

The Oxford dictionary has a more layman’s definition of a tourist, "a person who is travelling or visiting a place for pleasure” while the meaning of tourist in Collins dictionary is “a person who travels for pleasure, usually sightseeing and staying in hotels”.

Of course, these definitions of a tourist cannot be scientifically applied to gauge the economic health of the tourism sector. At the same time, inclusion of migrant labours in tourist data for measuring the performance of the sector, will not reveal the real scenario.  

Therefore, the current caricature of a tourist has to be well defined if the economics of tourism has to be deciphered in its true context.