Calangute: Only around a handful of beach shacks have opened for tourists in the popular Calangute-Candolim beach belt despite the early start of the licence renewal process, with around 80% of shacks still in the “construction” stage. With early indications of poor footfalls, some are eager to sublet even as the tourism department has prohibited subletting.Veteran Candolim shack owner Seby D’Souza said he and a couple of other shacks opened on Oct 2 for the long Gandhi Jayanti weekend. “People are going very slow in building their shacks probably because the crowd is low. It’s the heat and the high air fares from Delhi, Mumbai, which is keeping people away,” he said.Some may open after Dussehra next week, while the season will really get going with Diwali in early Nov, stakeholders said. “The heat makes it very difficult to carry on work on building the shack, so the workers take a nap in the afternoon,” a shack owner said.With around 260 charter flights expected, many shack owners are looking at ‘interested’ parties from Delhi, Mumbai and other metro cities to sublet their shacks, stakeholders said. Last season saw 189 charter arrivals bringing in 40,336 tourists.While traditionally shack operators from Calangute-Candolim largely relied upon charter tourists, with their numbers slowly depleting over the last decade, they have shifted focus towards domestic tourists, a shack operator said.“Running beach shacks is not lucrative enough for most shack operators, so they sub-let. There are some shack licence holders who never even build their own shacks. They simply take the licence after paying the fee and then sell the licence for around Rs 3-4 lakh,” Manuel Cardozo, president of the Traditional Shack Owners Association, said.“There are others who build the shacks and then give them on rent for a few lakhs, the price depending on the location. This has been going on for years,” Cardozo said.Last season, based on QR payments, almost 150 shacks were caught for subletting, but after notices were sent to cancel their licences, nothing was done. “We expect the trend to repeat,” he said.
