Hotels gloomy as Games booking yet to gain speed

With the expected arrival of over one lakh tourists and sports enthusiasts, Delhi is supposed to be a hot tourist destination during the Commonwealth Games. Manoj Sharma reports.

With the expected arrival of over one lakh tourists and sports enthusiasts, Delhi is supposed to be a hot tourist destination during the Commonwealth Games.

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But the mood in the city's hospitality industry is hardly sporty.

The industry fears that far from being a bonanza, the Games may prove to be a bane for it. The reason: The Games are hardly six weeks away and city hotels, which have committed thousand of rooms for the event, have so far got negligible bookings.

The Games travel office had earmarked about 6,000 rooms in starred hotels exclusively for the visitors. "As of today (Tuesday), the bookings are negligible. In fact, we are likely to lose the regular tourists that we get in the month of October, which is a peak tourist season," said Rajinder Kumar, president of Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India, and director of Ambassador Hotel in Delhi.

Seeing the abysmally low bookings, the Organising Committee has now begun releasing rooms it had earmarked in various starred hotels. Sources said the OC has already released about 20 per cent of the 6,000 rooms it had allocated for the Games in various hotels. "We fear we may not even get corporate clients that we get during weekdays in October. We may not be left with any option but to resort to distress sales if bookings do not improve by the end of this month," Kumar said.

With no bookings yet, several hotels that had committed their rooms for the Games have now begun taking regular bookings for those earmarked rooms. "The OC had asked for 50 rooms in our Gurgaon hotel. We had no Commonwealth bookings within the waiting period of 60 days, which

expired on July 31. So, we are now taking regular bookings for these rooms," said Leela spokesperson.

The Games travel office feigned ignorance on the subject. Arjun Sharma, managing director of La Passage to India, the official travel agency for the Games, refused to comment.

Karan Anand, head of relationships and supplier management at Cox and Kings said the controversies surrounding the Games have further aggravated the situation. "With so much negative publicity, this was bound to happen. Another reason could also be that the hotel rates were very high ... with so many people descending on Delhi, the regular tourists who would come have also skipped Delhi," he said.