Goa's first plane-load of tourists to arrive Oct 15

Goa's tourist season will kick off Oct 15 with the arrival of the first foreign chartered flight from Ukraine at the Dabolim international airport here, Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar has said.

"The first chartered flight to Goa will arrive Oct 15. It's coming from Ukarine," Parulekar told IANS.

Goa annually attracts three milion tourists, of whom half a million are foreigners.

Parulekar also said that the likely implementation of the visa on-arrival facility at Goa's airport Oct 2 could boost Goa's foreign tourist arrival figures by around 25 percent.

"We expect the implementation to start by Oct 2 on Gandhi Jayanti. If that happens, the tourism arrival will increase by 25 percent," he said.

Fuelled by European chartered tourists, Goa's conventional tourist season starts in October and winds up in March, when the mild winter sun works as a good break for travellers from Russia, Britain, Ukraine, Germany etc. from the harsh winter in their countries.

Tourism officials expect over 1,000 chartered flight to arrive in the coming season, as compared to the 900 which landed last season.

Goa's airport, which operates from a military base, is one of the nine airports in India that have been selected for an e-visa facility, according to a budgetary announcement by union Finance minister Arun Jaitley.