Click to play videoNew Delhi: With only 19 days remaining to the start of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, there’s speculation among hoteliers whether they are going to have enough tourists pouring into the capital city for the sporting extravaganza or not. Hotels that were getting ready to receive the world now fear they may have to face huge losses.
Just a little more than a fortnight left for the Games and hotels have received very few bookings.
Ever since India got the bid for the CWG seven years ago, preparations were on to spruce up all the hotels in Delhi and the NCR to accommodate the huge influx of tourists expected during the Games. However, now with less than a month to go for the Games, the number of actual bookings presents an altogether different picture.
There are more than 50 star category and 63 general category hotels in the capital that were being refurbished to accommodate the over 1 lakh tourists who were expected to come to the capital during the Games, but the current trend of bookings show that the number of tourists will not go beyond 20,000. Infact, the Organising Committee (OC) had initially approached the hotels with a requirement of 6,000 rooms to accommodate the families of the athletes and other staff, but that has now come down to 1900.
"Tourists have been driven away,by corporates at their lowest coming into Delhi and with Delhiites who have chosen to be out of Delhi because they are getting attractive packages. We really might be left high and dry and it could be a crisis for the industry," said Rajindera Kumar, President, Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India.
The nearly 1300 registered Bed and Breakfast places are not faring any better either. People like Minu Aditya who had registered her five-bedroom house with the Delhi government as a part of the Bed and Breakfast scheme in 2007 realised she was staring at huge losses and preferred to give it out on rent.
"I would hardly get random enquiries once or twice a month, so I just did not want to continue because obviously when one has a property, one wants to generate income from it, so I gave it on rent instead," said Minu Aditya, Owner, Bed and Breakfast.
Tour operators say that besides lack of proper publicity abroad, there are a host of other reasons that have led to this downward graph.
"One is the aspect of knowing that Games have not been organised properly. Second, is the aspect of security and third, the aspect of health, which means there is an outbreak of diseases which people feel scared about," rued Rajinder Rai, President, Travel Agents Association of India.
So after the dengue threat looming large and the rains already playing spoilsport, the low tourist inflow is likely to be yet another dampener for CWG 2010.
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