Vizag hotels hit hard by tsunami

Occupancy levels dip by 40%

This new year has not been the same for star hotels in Vizag thanks to the killer tsunami that hit the Indian shores. Leading hotels in the port city have seen a 40 per cent fall in hotel occupancy levels with large-scale room cancellations and withdrawal of flight services to Vizag by Indian Airlines.

"The business of Visakhapatnam star hotels has been badly affected by tsunami. Flight services to Vizag have also been cancelled from the last one week. Due to this the occupancy rates have come down by 40-45 per cent in the city star hotels," Subrato Majumdar, president, Vizag Hotels Association and general manager, The Park Hotel, told Business Standard.

The business of The Park hotel, in particular, has taken a severe beating because of its location on the beach.

"Our occupancy rates had actually increased by 10-15 per cent in the current fiscal compared to the last fiscal. But after tsunami and cancellation of flight services to Vizag by Indian Airlines, occupancy rates have come down to 45-48 per cent during the last one week from 90-95 per cent in the early days of December," Majumdar added.

"Actually Vizag was not affected by the tsunami. In spite of this, the tourists and the business community are scared about visiting Vizag. In the last one week, we have seen about 30-35 room bookings being cancelled on a daily basis," he said.

"Our business has drastically come down in the last 10 days," T Achi Reddy, general manager, Green Park Hotel, said. "Before the tsunami our hotel occupancy rate was around 90 per cent. Now it has come down to 55-60 per cent and we see about 15 to 20 cancellations daily. This apart, many corporate clients cancelled their New Year celebrations in our hotel also," Reddy added.

"Due to the media publicity, tourists from Orissa, Kolkata and Chhattisgarh are scared to come to Vizag," S Prasanth, general manager, Daspalla Hotels, a leading three-star hotel in the city, said. Normally between December 22 and January 15 every year, our hotel receives about 45 tourist groups from Chhattisgarh and Orissa, but this year only three groups have come so far, he added.

"For the last one week, we have been receiving fax messages and phone calls for cancellation of rooms. Our current occupancy rate is 55 per cent now as against 90-95 per cent before the tsunami," Prashanth said.

"We were actually expecting occupancy rates of close to 100 per cent during this period," V Rajendra Prasad, general manager, Dolphin Group of Hotels, told Business Standard.