Hill Tourism Washed Away Along With Uttarakhand Floods

The recent devastating floods In Uttarakhand may have destroyed towns like Kedernath, but the after affects is being felt in hill stations like Mussoorie, Manali, Shimla, Dharmashala and Nainital, where hotels are reporting low occupancy of 5-10 percent despite 50 percent cut rates.

The alarming thing is that the hotels are not even getting bookings for the two long weeks from Eid to August 15. Usually a long weekend around India’s Independence Day sends occupancy levels beyond 80 percent for hotels in these destinations, but this year bookings are scarce and hotels expect occupancies to stay around 20 percent during this period. For instance, Manali, is running at 12 percent occupancy rate with none of the 40 rooms at Apple Country getting booked, which is one of the largest properties in Manali.

Rajeev Abhuja, General Manager of the 110 room Manali Resort, says, “The only relief is a group from Tamil Nadu that is in Manali for a movie shoot. They have booked 15 rooms from us”. He says that even if the coming weekends shows improvement. Still the occupancy will remain around 30percent.

After the June 16 cloudburst which was followed by a series of floods in parts of Uttarakhand ">http://globalvisiontours.com/uttarakhand/tourist-places.aspx

, occupancy at all hotels in Nainital, Mussoorie and Corbett was badly affected. Even Jaypee Residency Manor of Mussoorie, saw several conferences booked in June and July getting cancelled. Fortunately some of them have agreed to travel in August, which help the occupancy rate of the hotel.

This hotel of 135 rooms has dropped its rate from Rs 9,000 to Rs 5,500 to attract tourists; still there is not much hope of occupancy even in the two long weekends. Right now the hotel has only 10 percent of its rooms occupied. Sharma also stated that Mussoorie usually gets its occupancy from the returning pilgrims of Kedernath Yatra, which is also missing this year.

Uday Chandel, general manager of Fernhill Resort near Shimla expects the occupancy rate to increase to 50 percent in the coming weekends. REFERENCE