Goa, May 7 -- They arrived with glossy brochures, multilingual audio guides and the promise of transforming Goa into a world-class tourist destination. Today, those same double-decker buses sit abandoned in Baga - rusting monuments to yet another government tourism scheme that collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence. Goa's Hop-On Hop-Off (HOHO) bus service is dead. When the Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) first launched the service in May 2017 through Pune-based Prasanna Purple, it was hailed as a flexible, tourist-friendly sightseeing revolution - open-top and air-conditioned coaches gliding between Panjim, Miramar, Dona Paula, Old Goa and the Mangueshi Temple.

That operator exited. In February 2023, GTDC tried aga...