Sorry Sir, Our Rooms Are Full

Sorry Sir, Our Rooms Are Full

• Deluxe Hotels In Bangalore See Full Occupancy As Events Dot Cityscape This Week

The Economic Times


THE BUOYANT occupancy levels across hotels in Bangalore are going to witness another boost through this week with the city playing host to events like the IBM Analyst Meet that starts on Tuesday, NASSCOM’s ITES-BPO Summit and Bangalore Bio 2006 starting on June 7.

At the NASSCOM event, 100 international delegates and 350 delegates from other Indian cities out of a total of 600 delegates are expected. At the Bangalore Bio, the flagship biotech event promoted by the state government, organisers are expecting over 70 national and international speakers, 500 conference delegates and over 20,000 business visitors from within the city, other parts of India and also from over 20 countries.

These are big numbers, considering that the total inventory of five-star deluxe and four-star deluxe hotels is around 1,500 and the total approved rooms in the city is more than 2,600 including three and four star hotels. With these three mega events happening in the city, non-availability of rooms is resulting in a spillover of guests to Hyderabad, Chennai and Goa. According to sources, rooms are being booked in these places for delegates attending the IBM meet.

Paucity of rooms also means good business for serviced apartments. Though occupancy in service apartments is not event driven, the short-stay rooms of serviced apartments are registering 60-80% occupancy this week, according to the industry sources. Mr P K Mohan Kumar, area director and GM, Taj Hotels, says, “This week is going to be a good week because we are going to see 100% occupancy through the week unlike 85%- 100% occupancy on the first three days of the week and 75%-85% occupancy Thursday onwards.” He adds, “With Bangalore Bio event kicking off on Wednesday occupancy load has got distributed over the entire week.”

Mr Arjun Baljee, President, Royal Orchid Hotels says, “ The bookings for these three events were made much in advance. All our three hotels, which are the Royal Orchid, Central and Harsha are registering 100% occupancy level.” The Leela Kempinski and The Oberoi too are reporting 100% occupancy levels.

For providing accommodation and other related facilities to the delegates at Bangalore Bio, the organisers have tied up with ITDC ‘s Ashok Travels and Tours and The Chancery Hotels, which is the official hotel for the event. “All the rooms at both the Chancery hotels are fully booked for the event,” says Mr Taposh Chakraborty, President, The Chancery Hotels. Mr A N N Samrat, senior manager of Ashok Travels, says, “Most of the delegates, being part of corporates, have booked directly, while it is mostly first-timers to India and those from the academic fraternity who have gone through our service.” Air Deccan sees 100% load

Air Deccan carried 5,33,376 passengers in the month of May, 2006, according to the company’s media release. In the past 7 days, most of the North & North Eastern cities saw 100% load factors and other sectors across India have regis-tered more than 90% load factors. The travelling trend dur-ing the holiday season has proved to be the stimulus for this growth.