Despite New Year fervour, dip in occupancy concerns hospitality business

Visakhapatnam: As the curtains of '2022' are coming down paving the way for New Year, the hospitality industry gets busy with pre-bookings.

Normally, the demand for the year-end bookings would see an unprecedented rise around Christmas time and the trend would continue till New Year.

But despite the peak season, hoteliers do not find the occupancy ratio as promising as it was supposed to be. After Dasara festivities, hoteliers in Visakhapatnam foresee an encouraging business during the Christmas and New Year period.

Given the growing rise in the leisure travel segment, hotels generally flood with advanced bookings and the managements ensure that the registers brim with 100 per cent occupancy. "But we are not experiencing any such surge this year. In fact, travellers now prefer neighbouring states, including Odisha, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh. Earlier, it was a reverse trend as they used to arrive in Visakhapatnam for the New Year bash. Some of the apparent reasons for the change include lack of night life in the city, limited choice of liquor brands available in the market coupled with police restrictions," explains a hotelier, who has been in the hospitality industry for the past dozen years.

Even as advance bookings in most hotels would come to a close by now, a number of managements share that they are yet to receive enquiries for pre-bookings.

While a few hotels are doing well in terms of pre-bookings, the managements do agree that the party fervour is experiencing a downward trend. "Accommodation-wise, we are doing pretty well in reservations. But this year, not many hotels are hosting events. The primary reason for this would be some of them may not have taken the bar licence," reasons Sandeep Reddy, Group General Manager of Palm Beach Hotel.

According to hoteliers, there is a dip of 25 to 30 per cent in the occupancy ratio at the moment. They, however, pin hopes that the situation would slightly pick up in a few days with last minute bookings trickling in. Those working in MNCs and corporate companies, who prefer to exhaust the accumulated leaves by year-end, feel that Visakhapatnam is not their preferred choice of destination to relax and unwind for the New Year. "Mainly, liquor cost has gone up. Even for indulgence, we do not get the brands that we want to stock up to host a party," laments R Vinod Kumar, who works in a multinational company.