I was disappointed to read about the big fall of tourist numbers in Goa over the last few years. But I was not surprised. Even as a local Indian, visiting Goa, as a tourist, I have felt desperate many times with the way tourists are being treated and cheated by taxi drivers in particular.
In India, tourism is one of India’s biggest foreign exchange earners. This is in spite of the fact that India gets far less number of tourists, compared to much smaller countries like Thailand, Singapore, Mauritius and even Cyprus.
Many years ago, Dr Lalit Kanodia wrote a paper on the tourism industry and demonstrated how tourism can be a bigger foreign exchange earner than even software, and yet, though all kinds of encouragement and incentives are given for the development of software (and quite rightly), there seems little is being done for the development of tourism (quite unfairly).
The tourist in India is generally greeted by long immigration queues, not entirely clean toilets, lack of ready information in booklet form, taxi drivers, waiting outside to take them for a ride (in more ways than one), hanging on and whispering offers to change money at a better rate than the official one, hotels may suddenly discover that there is no confirmed booking or no room available for the new arrivals, and much more.
And yet, the closer one looks at tourism, the more one realises that success in tourism requires a TOTAL NATIONAL attitudinal change. Tourism cannot be handled only by the tourism ministry of the government, or the tourism board, alone.
Just as in a company, change and culture cannot be handled only by the president or the chief executive officer (CEO) alone. He can only initiate a change to customer orientation, and perhaps draw a master plan. But unless everyone in the organisation, from the chairman to the doorman, becomes customer-oriented and changes focus from within the company to outside the company, a total cultural change will remain a chimera.
If Jan Carlsen of SAS talked about 2mn (million) ‘moments of truth’, every day, at 50 customer contacts per employee of the company, the moments of truth in the case of tourism are even greater -because these interactions embrace many more people, including those of the airlines. If this number is 50 times more, then the change management process in the case of a country is 50 times more difficult.
I take the comparison and the example away from India, to make it more objective. My wife and I arrived at Koruna hotel in Prague one afternoon, and we were given a room without a telephone. It was on the second floor of the hotel, a heritage building.
“What do I do for making calls?” I asked the receptionist.
“Well, you just come down to make calls and we will send someone to call you if you receive a call,” she answered coolly, in halting English.
The room charge, however, remained the same, as if the promised facility of a telephone in the room was provided.
Later that evening, we walked down the bank of the Danube, and found an open-air garden restaurant where we could sit and admire the view of the effectively flood-lit palace on the hill, on the other side of the river. It was a beautiful setting, a full moon night with a total effect of a picture postcard fantasy.
My wife and I wanted to sit there as long as possible, so we decided to have our dinner here. The choice of dishes and the price seemed reasonable, and we placed our order with a not particularly helpful waiter. After we had finished, we asked for the bill. The waiter wrote one on a slip of paper and gave it to me. I could not understand the fourth figure of 300 kopeks, in addition to our bill amount.
When I asked for an explanation, he said it was a service charge. “As much as 30%?” I asked.
“Yes, it is 150 kopeks per head.”
I insisted that it should have been stated on the menu card if it were the restaurant policy. I asked to see the menu card again or the manager. He knew he was cornered. He made out as if he was fed up of arguing, and said we need not pay any charge at all. He gave back the change. Only after I left the restaurant, I realised he had shortchanged me by 150 kopeks. He had won his round anyway!
The following day our room was changed to one with a telephone. This made it far more convenient. We did not have more than a few local calls to make to a friend who worked in Prague, and the airline to reconfirm our ticket.
On checking out of the hotel, the receptionist, a middle-aged lady with a superior attitude, asked us to pay a bill of US$10 for telephone calls. “But I made only three calls,” I insisted. “Surely, this cannot cost US$3 each?”
“It could,” she said, “depending on how long you spoke at each call?”
“Can I have a printout with the details?”
“Sorry, it is all automatically recorded. Please pay this because there can be no mistake.”
Once again an unsuspecting tourist was taken for a ride!
We needed to go to the main station to take a train to the outskirts of Prague. “I will organise a taxi for you,” the receptionist proffered, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “How much will it cost?” “Only US$10,” she said.
It seemed high, so we said no. We walked to the nearest metro station and decided to take a train to the main station. This took all of ten minutes. This time, we had escaped and unscathed!
We left the big city and went to the countryside to get a real feel of the Czech Republic. And it was here that we could touch the real soul of the Czechs. These were people who were unspoiled by the tourist flood and had not fallen into the ‘greed trap’. They had not been made insensitive by the rush and pressure of the big city. They were warm and helpful, and willing to give of the little they had, in their own rustic way.
We got off the small railway station at Benesov, to go and see the Archduke Frank Ferdinand’s Knopiste castle. The road sign outside the station showed the direction but after we began walking, we found the road seemed endless.
We had just stopped on the curb to decide whether we should proceed, when a trailer truck stopped alongside, and the driver asked us where we were going. Knopiste, we told him. “Please come in,” he said in Czech, more by gesture, than by language. He dropped us right to the top of the hill at the castle entrance. He saved us an hour’s walk uphill.
After we had finished sightseeing, we had to wend our way back to the station. It was again a long way, but at least it was a downward walk. We took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. We asked a young lady who was passing by for confirmation of directions to the station. She gave these, and we continued to walk.
After 15 minutes, a car stopped alongside and the same young lady called out to us. She said she would drop us to the station. “It is quite a long walk, but by car we will be there very soon,” she said. She had gone home and brought out the car only to drive us to the station, she told us in halting English. We could not thank her enough.
We met with so much kindness in just one day at Benesov. We had also met with so much of cheating or attempted cheating in four days in Prague. It was the last days of summer and the beginning of autumn, but the crowds of tourists kept streaming into their country. The government had done an excellent job of building an attractive tourism infrastructure, good and clean roads; floodlit heritage buildings; easy and free availability of roadmaps; concerts and plays every day at many locations; police alerts for pickpockets and thieves; tourist sightseeing packages; advanced airport facilities. But the ‘all permeating’ attitudinal change had not taken place where the nation would pass the litmus test of ‘moments of truth’.
And when it does, the Czech Republic, which is soaked with history and where cities and towns are ‘open museums’, will be among the most sought-after destinations by tourists, who want to be transported on the wings of history into an era of mediaeval magic.
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, international conference speaker and has been visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
