Goa's Next Big Attraction? Goa Itself In Its Anti-Hotel Trend

For decades, the typical Goan holiday has been predicated on a rehearsed script: a beach, a shack, a drink, and a party. Goa, however, is now trying to sell travellers a different kind of image, one that is less about mindless consumption and more about experiencing the place for its diversity of attractions.

Goa's Tourism Department has recently introduced stricter rules on what visitors can do at beaches and tourist spots, with 19 activities now classified as nuisances and fines ranging from INR 5,000 to INR 1 lakh. The list includes unauthorised beach parties, public drinking in prohibited areas, littering, cooking in public places, driving on beaches and the use of unlicensed tourism operators. At the same time, the state is actively promoting experiences that take visitors away from the beach: heritage walks at Aguad, monsoon tourism and the newly launched Ekadasha Teertha Yatra, a three-day circuit connecting 11 temples across Goa under its “Goa Beyond Beaches” vision.

These developments suggest that Goa is not just trying to attract more tourists; it is actively influencing what tourists come to do here.

Goa's Tourism Boom Comes With A Catch

Goa recorded 1.08 crore tourist arrivals in 2025, of which more than 1.02 crore were domestic visitors. About 5.18 lakh were foreign tourists, compared with 2017, when the state received nearly 8.9 lakh foreign visitors. This contrast must appear striking to many. Overall, tourism has continued to grow and has recovered after the Covid-19 slump, but the international audience that once accounted for a significant proportion of Goa’s tourist numbers has not returned to its earlier scale.

The reasons are not entirely within Goa's control. Higher airfares, cumbersome visa procedures and stronger competition from destinations such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam have made other Asian holidays more attractive to some international travellers. A limited number of affordable beachfront accommodations, the cancellation of a direct London-Goa service and the relative ease of travelling elsewhere in Asia are also contributing to this shift. But the problems are also local, with travellers highlighting cleanliness, expensive taxis and inconvenient connectivity. Tourism stakeholders also noted that the rise of domestic tourism and the MICE economy has pushed up hotel prices, making Goa less competitive for some international visitors.

This shift offers a glimpse of a larger malaise. International visitors tend to stay longer and spend across a wider section of Goa's tourism ecosystem, from excursions and motorbike rentals to shacks and restaurants. Domestic visitors, by contrast, are more likely to choose full-board packages. So the question for Goa is not only how to bring tourists back, but also what kind of tourism it wants to build around itself.

The state has been paying heed to this shift in its tourism trends, and some recent announcements are a case in point. It has been promoting eco-tourism, adventure tourism, heritage tourism, and hinterland experiences under its “Goa Beyond Beaches” vision. The Ekadasha Teertha Yatra has turned 11 temples into a three-day circuit, while the Aguad Port & Jail Complex is being promoted through guided heritage walks, an interactive museum and monsoon experiences that foreground four centuries of history. The idea is not necessarily to replace the beach holiday, but to complement it with other versions of Goa.

That shift is particularly important for a destination whose international appeal was once tied to its distinctive sense of place. If Goa is to compete with destinations that can offer cheaper packages and easier access, its answer cannot simply be to offer more of the same. It has to make the things that are difficult to replicate elsewhere: its villages, architecture, food, history, and slower rhythm.

That is where the changing hospitality landscape becomes interesting.

The Hotel As Part Of The Destination

The rise of what is loosely being called the “anti-hotel” is part of this story. Although the term might sound like a rejection of hotels, the properties emerging under this broad idea are not necessarily doing that. They are rejecting the homogeneity of the concept of luxury, the predictable lobby, the identical rooms, the standardised service, and the sense that the same hotel could exist almost anywhere in the world and still be the same internally.

In Goa, this push is finding resonance. The proposition is to make the house, the village, the landscape, and the architecture a part of the holiday itself.

Kapil Chopra, founder of The Postcard Hotel, sees the phenomenon less as the arrival of a new hospitality category and more as a return to something Goa had lost sight of. “I do not necessarily see this as the rise of the ‘anti-hotel’,” he said. “I see it as a long-overdue rediscovery of the real Goa.”

Chopra's argument begins with the destination itself. Goa, he said, was always more than its nightlife: it was a meeting point of Indo-Portuguese architecture, Saraswat and Catholic traditions, Konkan influences, cuisine and a free-spirited culture. But hospitality increasingly presented it through a narrow lens, with hotels, packages and tourism experiences built around partying.

The Postcard's response was to restore Portuguese estates and turn them into intimate luxury hotels. The distinction is important for Kapil. The hotel is not simply another comfortable base from which to see Goa; it is supposed to be part of what the traveller has come to see.

“Come to Goa and stay somewhere nice, or come to Goa and stay somewhere that could only exist in Goa.”

Chopra takes that argument further. Goa, he said, should not be reduced to the conventional distinction between North and South. It is a collection of 334 villages, each with its own character, landscape and rhythm. He pointed to places such as Saligao, Cuelim, Velha Goa, Chicalim, and Netravali as examples of how different the experience of the state can be from one village to another.

That is also the logic behind The Postcard's different properties. The Mandovi River property is built around the river and its private jetty, while the upcoming Chicalim property is a 400-year-old Portuguese estate set in the hills. The point is not to replicate a single successful hotel across multiple locations, but to allow each property to draw its character from the place where it sits.

It is an approach increasingly visible among other hospitality properties as well.

At The First House, run by Yogi Shah and Suchna Hegde Shah, the target guest is not necessarily the first-time visitor racing through a list of beaches and nightlife spots. The property is looking at travellers coming to Goa, not for their first or second time, but people who are no longer in a hurry to discover everything.

“What we at The First House are trying to do is create a space that is more about quiet luxury, where nothing feels ‘served’ but more like a place where one unwinds at their own home,” Shah said.

For Shah, this is part of a broader resurgence of slow tourism, driven by the growth of villa stays, boutique hotels and wellness properties. He is careful not to suggest that the quintessential Goa is disappearing. Instead, he sees two tracks developing alongside each other: the familiar Goa and a slower, more intimate version of it.

That distinction matters because it suggests that the alternative Goa is not necessarily being created for a completely new tourist. It may be for someone who has already done the old Goa and now wants to experience it differently. The experience can be as simple as an unhurried afternoon by a pool, a walk through a village or a stay in a restored Portuguese home.

Hacienda de Bastora similarly centres its stay around a restored Portuguese mansion, independent villas, gardens and the intimacy of a private home. At Hacienda de Pastora, architect Raya Shankhwalker takes the idea further, creating a property that can be rented by a single group or family rather than functioning like a conventional hotel. The idea is privacy, personalised service, tailor-made culinary experiences and immersion rather than a schedule of standard hotel services.

Shankhwalker sees this as part of a wider shift in hospitality. Corporate hotels, he argued, can lack the personality, warmth and local touch that travellers increasingly want. The emerging guest, instead, is looking for experiences with nature, culture, and people. The important point is that the anti-hotel is not necessarily anti-luxury. It is luxury without the standardisation that traditionally comes with it.

Are We Ready To Embrace Goa, Reinvented?

A hotel might be able to restore a Portuguese mansion. It can also grow its own produce, curate a heritage walk or arrange a private culinary experience. It cannot, by itself, clean all the roads which one takes to reach its gates.

Shankhwalker emphasised this, pointing out environmental degradation, cleanliness, civic order, and road safety as problems Goa will have to address if it wants to remain a long-term destination for hospitality and travel. For him, the emergence of slow travel and the anti-hotel may bring a more sensitive visitor, but that will only go so far without a structural change in the destination itself.

Therefore, cleanliness, connectivity, transport, and other basic infrastructure are not peripheral concerns in Goa's tourism strategy but are at its heart. The same applies to the way new hotels are being built.

Chopra warns against high-density, cookie-cutter development that places hundreds of rooms on small parcels of land and then adds a brand name to call it luxury. Such properties, he argues, could exist almost anywhere. His alternative is a hospitality policy that emphasises heritage, culture, land-to-room ratios, and regional design. This is perhaps a significant tension within Goa's tourism reinvention. The state is trying to sell the qualities that large-scale, generic development can erode.

The government's current tourism strategy addresses that tension by making more of Goa part of the visitor experience. Heritage tourism at Aguad takes into account four centuries of history through guided walks, museum visits and cultural experiences. The Ekadasha Teertha Yatra similarly turns the state's religious landscape into a defined circuit, connecting temples across North and South Goa and positioning spiritual heritage alongside the conventional beach holiday.

But the challenge is not simply to persuade visitors that Goa has a culture. Rather, it is to make that culture and landscape viable parts of a tourism economy without turning them into another packaged product. This is where the anti-hotel becomes an intriguing idea, even though there are concerns over this terminology. These properties are not really against hotels. They are against the idea that hospitality should separate the traveller from the destination.

The First House's repeat visitors, The Postcard's village-specific properties and Hacienda de Pastora's private sanctuary all begin from the same premise: a traveller does not necessarily need more things to do. They may need a different relationship with the place they have come to visit. That relationship needs to matter beyond the luxury segment. If Goa can make its villages, food, architecture, religious sites, landscapes and local traditions part of the tourism economy, it can offer visitors reasons to stay longer, return more often and travel beyond the most crowded coastal strips.

With diversification, there has to be an increased awareness that it is also responsible. A heritage walk can slip into becoming another checklist. A village can become another photo stop. A restored Portuguese house can become another aesthetic backdrop, detached from the surrounding community. The success of Goa's alternative tourism model will therefore depend on whether it can preserve the difference it is now trying to sell.

That does not mean the party Goa is disappearing. The quintessential version of the destination will remain. And the state's tourism numbers show that Goa continues to attract enormous volumes of visitors. What is changing is the possibility of another Goa existing alongside it. One built around villages as much as beaches; architecture as much as nightlife; temples, churches and heritage sites alongside shacks; and intimate stays alongside conventional resorts. The question is whether Goa can change how it sells itself without altering the very things that make it worth visiting in the first place.

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