BHOPAL: Even as the pandemic struck a deadly blow to the hospitality industry in the city, the same period also saw a see-saw change in the fortunes with big brands like Taj and Radisson making a foray.
With these global brands, visitors, tourists, and people have a variety of quality choices. Now, Bhopal has budget hotels offering a room for Rs 1000 a day to the presidential suite at Taj Lakefront that will charge over Rs 1 lakh a day.
“When I came to Bhopal in the late 1980s, there was one hotel- Jehan Numa- which people talked about. You didn’t have too many budget hotels either till MP Nagar developed. A few hotels in New Market and some in the Old City. After the development of MP Nagar, many hotels came up. Still, there was no brand name from the outside or national or international chain of hotels coming to Bhopal till Marriot came some years ago, and now you have Taj and Radisson as well. You need to have hotels of repute to become a happening city. International conferences, cricket matches, and literary festivals can only be hosted in a city that has four-five such hotels. We are moving in that direction,” said a retired IAS officer while talking to TOI.
Now, Bhopal has a variety of hotels catering to all sections of people, but what about the footfall? How are they faring after the situation has almost rolled back to normalcy? Most of the websites for booking rooms in hotels in Bhopal would say: “Only one or two rooms left, but at the same time, several budget hotels are showing 30 to 50 % concession in tariff, which is already not much.”
President of Bhopal Hotels & Restaurants Association, Tejinder Pal Singh Pali, the owner of two hotels of repute in the city, “It’s not good. Most of the hotels in Bhopal are not even half-occupied. At least, Bhopal is not getting the kind of footfall to boost the city's hospitality industry.”
When asked whether the tariff of rooms in the average hotels has gone up compared to pre-Covid days, he said, “It’s not possible now. We can think of that in the new financial year, but as of now, room tariffs can’t be increased because we need to attract more guests. Yes, the input cost of food has increased so much that a rise in prices of dishes served in restaurants seems imminent, but not room tariff,” he said.
