German tourists take app-based taxi in Goa, local cabbies hound | Goa News

Panaji: Yet another video has surfaced of tourists in Goa forced to trudge a distance until they can catch a ride with GoaMiles, with a German travel influencer facing the brunt this time in Patnem. Alex Welder claimed that a rickshaw driver demanded Rs 500 for a ride, while the app charged him Rs 300 for the same route.Welder said that local rickshaw operators followed him and his companion, a woman, in a harrowing situation that the German described as a “bit weird”. “They wanted Rs 500 for the tuk-tuk ride, and we ordered a cab from GoaMiles for Rs 300. I think the locals here have a big problem,” he said.

At one point, their GoaMiles driver even asked them to hide his vehicle number plate because the local rickshaw and taxi operators were recording. In the video, Welder is heard asking the GoaMiles taxi driver, “What’s the problem with them?”“Anytime we say we are ordering from GoaMiles, they say ‘it’s not allowed here’, but you can actually order the cab on the app, so obviously it is allowed,” said Welder.To make matters worse for the tourists, the GoaMiles cab was stopped by police a little distance away. Welder said that he could not understand what was going on, but mentioned that the GoaMiles taxi driver was charged Rs 500 by police.“I can understand the issue that people have with ride-sharing apps pretty much undercutting the local prices. Eventually, I paid the Rs 500 fine for the driver, and maybe someone can help me understand what was going on. That situation obviously doesn’t make any sense,” said Welder.This is not the first time tourists have had an unpleasant experience booking a GoaMiles cab. Over the past few months, some videos have surfaced where domestic tourists drew attention to the threatening behaviour of local taxi operators.On Oct 2, Shreya Agarwal, a visual designer from Mumbai, was forced to drag suitcases and heavy bags for nearly 1km in Varca to reach a taxi that she booked on GoaMiles. The GoaMiles driver refused to come to the gate of the resort operated by a large chain over fears of being beaten up. In Sep, a woman from Ahmedabad was prevented from taking a cab at Betalbatim, and she was threatened by local taxi drivers for booking an app-based taxi.The turf war between Goa’s traditional taxi operators and app-based services such as GoaMiles is beginning to affect the state’s tourism brand, say hoteliers, tourists, and others. “The Goa taxi mafia will destroy the tourism industry there, one day at a time,” said UK-based content creator Alex Wanders.Welder agreed with the damage being done by taxi operators, which would lead to tourists avoiding India and going to Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. “It’s a huge issue in Goa. They are destroying tourism there. If they go by govt rates, they will get more rides and profit,” said A R Pandey.One commenter, Manish Choudhary, said that they were lucky the cab driver did not get beaten up, while another, Arjun Premnath, blamed vote bank politics for the mess.