Panaji: Somewhere in a gated society in Siolim, a stroller rolls across the floor above at midnight. A door clicks open down the corridor for guests no one in the building has met. By morning, the flat is quiet again until the next booking comes through.This is Goa’s shadow hospitality industry: unlicensed, unscrutinised, and increasingly indistinguishable from the residential buildings it operates inside. It runs parallel to the beaches, the temple chants, the fugdi and deknni, the fish-curry-rice that Goa markets to the world. Only now, instead of tourists learning Goa’s rhythms, the state’s residents are learning tourists’ schedules, from inside their own housing societies.The mechanics are simple enough. A licensed hotel answers to tourism department registration, a panchayat trade licence, food and drug administration scrutiny, fire and pollution clearances, excise and GST, and pays commercial rates for water and power. A residential flat quietly relisted as a nightly rental pays none of that, and still charges hotel prices, undercutting licensed operators by 15-30%. Even a conservative estimate of 5,000 such flats functioning for 150 nights a year at Rs 5,000 per night points to a roughly Rs 375 crore informal economy sitting entirely outside the tax net.In the state assembly, legislators had put the number of unregistered tourism units across Goa at 12,000.The state’s own homestay and bed & breakfast policy saw this coming. Clause 4.5 of the policy bars registering a homestay inside a housing society without an NOC from its managing committee citing residents’ security and the “continuous entry of unknown individuals”. Clauses 4.3 and 4.4 go further, requiring the owner or a resident agent to actually live on the premises. Tourism director Kedar Naik points to the NOC requirement as proof govt has acted. “We have made it mandatory to obtain an NOC from housing societies if the flat has to be registered as a homestay or bed-n-breakfast,” he said.In 2025, the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa had written to the tourism department warning that there are many small hotels, B&Bs, and homestays that are operating without trade licences, tourism licences, FDA approvals, and fire clearances. TTAG had said that govt is losing revenue in form of registration fees and taxes that registered businesses are paying.“Over five years, the registrations of hotels and guesthouses increased from 3,500 to 9,000. This was after the tourism department simplified the registration process under ease of doing business. A significant number of the unregistered units have registered themselves but some may still be there in housing societies,” said TTAG president Jack Sukhija.There is also a growing unease about the aggression of unbridled tourism. The people absorbing the discomfort are residents, senior citizens, single women, and families that find unknown men as neighbours. No verification, no guest register, no C-forms or T.I.M.E software captures this footprint.“Govt must ensure strict enforcement of Goa’s bed and breakfast policy and delisting of unregistered properties from online travel aggregators as it is not just about tax or nuisance,” said one Arpora resident living through it.Behind much of this sits an investment logic that has little to do with hospitality. Villas and apartments bought at Rs 3 crore to Rs 10 crore need to earn their keep, and leasing them to sub-contractors who run informal homestays is often the fastest route to a return.Vijay Shetty, group head for commercial banking at Axis Bank, says that the bank has seen a strong growth in “informal” operators in the hospitality sector who approach the bank for loans. “What we are trying to do is when they come for a loan, on behalf of that customer, we register them as an MSME. So, if they take a loan from us, they become an MSME by default,” said Shetty, adding that the bank foresees continued growth in this segment.Tourism minister Rohan Khaunte also acknowledged this challenge during a recent meeting with Yuva Clubs. “There are a lot of unverified accommodation that is being shown on the Internet. When travellers come here or if the department checks, the property is not registered with us. There are such instances. We have to weed off such practices,” said Khaunte.In 2025, the state recorded 1 crore tourist visits of which 99.4 lakh were domestic travellers and 4.7 lakh foreign. By July this year alone, 59 lakh domestic and 2.4 lakh international travellers had already arrived. The numbers suggest a state comfortably absorbing its tourists but experience says otherwise.“While tourism continues to provide employment and livelihoods, its growth has also brought challenges such as congestion, waste, pressure on natural resources, over-dependence on a few popular destinations and the gradual marginalisation of local communities and traditional livelihoods,” said Fr Malcolm Colaco, executive secretary, centre for responsible tourism.He says that the focus cannot be on how to attract more tourists, but how tourism can benefit people while protecting the state’s environment, culture, and identity. Colaco feels that technology can help make lesser-known destinations visible, connect visitors directly with local experiences, and promote responsible travel while curbing uncontrolled mass tourism.He says that aggressive tourists have no respect for the law of the land, which if not addressed firmly and decisively can lead to serious difficulties for promotion of tourism in Goa.
