Swine flu empties Pune's hotels

Up to 50% of the rooms vacant as travellers quit city.f

With both leisure and business travellers dropping Pune from their itineraries, 30 to 50 per cent of all grades of rooms in the city are vacant.

This steep fall comes as double whammy for these hotels, since they were forced to pare tariffs 35 to 40 per cent owing to falling occupancies as a result of the economic slowdown.

Pune has been declared the epicentre of the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. About 15 people have died so far in the city, with more than 60 new cases out of the 350 swine flu cases here detected in the last two days alone.

The city has a handful of five-star hotels such as the Taj Blue Diamond, Le Meridien, Royal Orchid, Sun-n-Sand, Hotel Gordon House and Courtyard by Marriott, which opened in June. Most hotels here fall under the four-star and economy segment.

"More than 30 per cent of our rooms are lying idle at the 133-room hotel in Pune. Occupancies have been hit badly following mass cancellations of travel plans by our guests," said Gulshan Arora, senior vice-president, Sun-n-Sand Group.

"The fall in occupancy may grow to 50 per cent if the situation continues," he predicted.

The bulk of visitors to Pune are business travellers to the region that covers the auto and auto-component manufacturing hub of Chinchwad, Chakan, Ranjangaon and Talegaon. Pune also boasts of one of the country's biggest IT parks.

Hoteliers find themselves in a bind because they do not plan to cut tariffs further, having done so only recently. "There will be no cut in room rentals, even though there has been a significant impact on our business. The economic slowdown caused a 30 to 40 per cent drop in occupancy, and swine flu has added another 5 percentage points to that," said S P Jain, chairman, The Pride Hotels.

He added, however, that the hotel was not taking any chances and had appointed a doctor on duty round the clock to attend to emergencies.

Room occupancies are not the only casualties of swine flu. Eating joints and restaurants have also seen a 50 per cent drop in business. For most hotels, food and beverages account for more than half their revenues.

"The restaurants have been hit more than hotel room earnings," said Jay Kannan, general manager, Sayaji Hotels.

Although Sayaji's three-star, 244-room property is situated on the outskirts of Pune, in Wakad, the hotel has reported a significant drop in activity from corporate travellers.

"We have seen many companies cancel their reservations over the past week to 10 days because of the swine flu scare. We lost confirmed reservations for about 40 rooms in the last few days," Kannan said.