Hyderabad, October 14: The hospitality segment in Hyderabad is seeing some cancellations of hotels rooms booked.
Though this is largely attributed to fear due to the strike, on for 32 days now in support of statehood to Telangana, trade circle also cite economic conditions in general and the changing demand-supply scenario in the hospitality segment as the other reasons.
Though individual hotels declined to quantify the cancellations they have had, they indicate them to around 30 per cent with a corresponding loss to the food and beverages segment of the hotels.
“Hospitality segment is not doing great in Hyderabad these days,” said Rajesh Ranjan, director of new properties at Aditya Sarovar Premiere Hotel.
According to Pankaj Saxena, general manager of Aditya Park, several domestic companies have removed Hyderabad from their destination calendar.
Among others, Medical Conference, an annual event at Hyderabad that would see about 1,000 to 1,500 visitors, has been moved to Ahmedabad for this year. “Not all events are getting cancelled. Events are being held but there is a drop in the number of participants,” said S Kannan, director and head, Confederation of Indian Industry (Andhra Pradesh).
For Jaideep Khanna, general manager (sales and distribution) at Novotel Hyderabad Convention Centre and Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), known to host big events that have attendance of 1,500 to 2,000 visitors, a loss of a couple of events or so will not dent the image of Hyderabad as a convention destination.
“Several high profile international events continue to be hosted in Hyderabad. Even as we speak, there is an International Lawyers’ Conference is being held with about 1,000 people attending it. India-Africa Partnership is too is on. This could have happened in Delhi, Mumbai or any other city but they still chose Hyderabad,” said Khanna.
Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Wednesday announced Hyderabad would host Global Partnership Summit next year where around 1500 delegates would attend.
Khanna, however, admitted that HICC could have seen about 10 per cent domestic events, mostly corporate meeting, getting cancelled in the recent times.
Reacting on how the industry was dealing with the situation, he said: “We are driving the point that entire Hyderabad is not affected due to the Telangana agitation, which has been on for some time and remained largely peacefully.”
HICC recently conducted road shows in Paris and Brazil to get clients to host their conventions here and have received encouraging response for events to be held in 2013, 2014 and 2015, he said.
More than the Telangana agitation, glorification of isolated events is having a deep impact on the hospitality segment, he said.
The hotel inventory in Hyderabad is estimated to be 8,000 keys and would see about 50 per cent increase in three years due to addition of new mid segment to luxury hotels.
“The tourism industry to a large extent is dependent on socio-political environment. The cultural diversity of the region augers well for tourism and we hope to witness substantial progress in the coming years,” said Dipak Haksar, chief operating officer of ITC Hotels.
-Agencies