Maharashtra hotels, resorts get lockdown blues as Covid-19 curbs return

Hotels and resorts in tourist places in Maharashtra have seen up to 30 per cent rise in cancellations and new bookings as the
state reports the sharpest increase in new Covid-19 cases.

Hotels had seen demand picking up in the winter of 2020, but restrictions imposed by local authorities have thwarted that.

“Hotels in hill stations including Lonavala and Mahabaleshwar were seeing healthy customer growth especially on weekends. But with the state administration clamping down, business has taken a hit. Hotels in these hill stations have reported up to 30 per cent cancellations in the last week,” said Dilip Datwani, advisor of Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India.

Ashutosh Salil, managing director of Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation, agreed. The state tourism corporation witnessed a year on year increase in room occupancy and revenue between December-February but business is slowing down in districts with high caseload.

He said the corporation’s boat club in Nashik was shut for weekends due as part of a lockdown to contain Covid-19. Weddings planned at the resort in Nashik have been cancelled. Business at resorts in Aurangabad and Nagpur too has slowed because of restrictions.

“Business has suffered wherever district administrations have imposed restrictions. However, there is no adverse impact on our beach resorts in Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg and we continue to see good occupancy in those resorts. We are also receiving bookings for our resort in Tadoba tiger reserve in Chandrapur district,” Salil said.

Nandivardhan Jain, chief executive officer at Noesis Capital Advisors expects occupancies in and around Mumbai, which had been recovering month-on-month, to take a hit in March. “There are cancellations of weddings and events as people want to avoid travelling to Mumbai due to Covid-19 related protocols,” said Jain.
 

Leisure destinations in Maharashtra, said Jain, are not going to suffer much. Most people travelling to Lonavala,

Mahabaleshwar and Ratnagiri live in the state and can drive down in their own vehicles. From an average decline of 47-49 per cent in October 2020, average occupancy at hotels in India has been inching up. The declined narrowed to 29-31 per cent in January, according to HVS Anarock.

Domestic travel has been on an upswing for the past few months with resorts and holiday homes in driving distance from cities seeing good demand. Pent up demand and restrictions on international travel too have contributed to growth. Online portals too are expecting strong sequential growth.

However, rising cases and government restrictions are leading to booking deferrals especially in Maharashtra. Over 30,000 new Covid-19 cases were reported in the state on Saturday accounting for over 60 per cent of the all India figure. The civic body has decided to carry out rapid antigen test for inbound train passengers at railway terminuses in Mumbai. Already airline passengers from five states arriving in Mumbai are subject to a RT-PCR test.

S Ramanathan, chairman and managing director at Sterling Holidays & Resorts, said business had started picking up from October onwards and kept improving in the subsequent months.

“But, there has been a little bit of uncertainty from the third week of February and there have been cancellations in the last two to three weeks. Sterling’s property in Lonavala for instance has seen 10-15 per cent cancellation this month.”

Ramanathan said the resorts mostly see last minute bookings from people who drive from their homes.

“It’s premature to predict the summer vacation trend now. People will travel if the number of cases goes down,” said Ramanathan.