Holiday season fails to cheer hoteliers

A drop in number of Indian tourists and tepid response made by leisure travelers have pulled down room bookings in star hotels of the country.

According to Kathmandu-based star hotels, average room occupancy in November, December and January were down 15 percent, as against the same period a year ago. Worse, occupancy rates for the next few months of 2013 also do not look promising.

The negative trend in the travel industry began with negative growth in tourist arrivals in October. Since then, growth rate in incoming tourists has been meager.

"The meager growth rate cannot push up room occupancy rates, as many hotels, including ours, have added rooms. Lately, some new hotels have also come into operation," Pralhad Kunwar, general manager of Radisson Hotel Kathmandu, said.

Majority of the star hotels, as per the bookings received so far, said occupancy rates in January will hover at less than 40 percent. Leading star hotels recorded occupancy rate of around 55 percent in the same period last year.

"Bookings made so far suggest that the occupancy rate in our hotel will be down by 10 percent to 15 percent in upcoming months," Bharat Joshi, resident manager of Hotel Yak and Yeti, said.

The months of December and January are preferred by Indian leisure travelers and holidaymakers from other parts of the world. However, bookings are negligible, according to hoteliers.

Kaushal K Singh, director of sales and marketing at Gokarna Forest Resort, said that last-minute cancellations made by Chinese tourists affected occupancy rates in most of the hotels in November.

"Our occupancy rate was slightly better because of good performance of the MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition) segment," he said, adding, "chartered flights of BB Airways between Taiwan and Kathmandu helped us a lot, but occupancy rate declined following discontinuation of chartered flights."

Hoteliers said political instability, economic crisis in Europe and expensive and lengthy flight to Nepal were the major factors behind the drop in bookings. Besides, rumors of doomsday also affected tourist movement worldwide and it had some effect in Nepal as well, they said.

Joshi said his hotel used to get a lot of bookings from Indian tourists in December and January of past years. "Unfortunately, the booking from Indian tourists went down sharply, while movement of Japanese tourists is slow," he added.

Despite poor occupancy, the average revenue of star hotels was better during the period this year than a year ago. "Recent hike in room tariff and strengthening of the US dollar against Nepali currency were the factors behind rise in revenue," clarified Kunwar.

source: republica,6 Jan 2013