Tourism boom leaves no room for complacency

New Delhi, May 7: Even as India is engaged in aggressive marketing of its "incredible" destinations abroad, it is still grappling with the task of creating more hotel rooms to match the increasing demand for accommodation from foreign tourists.

The last five-year period saw a spurt in the foreign tourist arrival, but there was no exponential increase in the number of quality hotel rooms.

The high-voltage and multi-million-dollar promotion campaigns launched around the world under the "Incredible India" campaign has undoubtedly put India Tourism on a high pedestal with each passing year registering 15 to 25 per cent annual increase to take the total arrival to nearly four million in 2005.

The first four months of the current year also registered a growth of above 10 per cent every month with April recording the highest of 24.7 per cent.

The boom has brought with it a severe shortage of quality hotel rooms, a crunch that has spurred hotels to raise rates dramatically.

There were also instances of room bookings bouncing even in leading hotels in the scramble to make capital out of the scarcity in hotel accommodation.

India now has only 103,973 rooms in 1934 classified hotels in the six categories of one star to five star Deluxe, which is far short of the increasing requirement under the impact of booming tourism.

Mr Amitabh Kant, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, told UNI here today that there was a shortage of 30,000 quality rooms.

"The shortage will go up to 100,000 rooms in 2010 at the speed at which we are growing in terms of foreign tourist arrival." He said a major impediment to create more hotel rooms was lack of availability of land in major cities.

There are 82 five-star deluxe hotels with 18,764 rooms, 92 five-star with 11,332 rooms, 132 four-star with 9401 rooms and 704 three-star with 31,039 rooms. As many as 587 two-star hotels are also there which together have 19,031 rooms, while the 212 one-star hotels have 6950 rooms.

As many as 2,216 rooms are available with 83 heritage hotels while 5127 rooms are available with 50 hotels to be classifed by the Tourism Ministry.

Mr Kant said the Railways had been gearing itself up to create budget hotels to complement the efforts of the Tourism Ministry to find more accommodation for tourists.

The Railways have already identified seven sites for construction of budget hotels though the target is 100 such hotels in its land lying vacant in major stations across the country.

It is pointed out that though only 103,973 authorised hotel rooms are available across the country, there are countless more rooms in guest houses and hostels where quality can vary widely. But most of these category rooms are occupied by the domestic tourists whose movement had also gone up phenomenally in the past few years.

Travel industry sources are unanimous that the accommodation would be a bigger problem if India Tourism succeeds in its ambitious plan to attract tourists from neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The target of India Tourism is to attract 500,000 Pakistani tourists by 2007 in the context of a new Indian consulate being opened in Karachi as part of the new Confidence Building Measures(CBMs) between the two neighbours who remained hostile for long. "The proposed consulate would be able to issue more visas, making it easy for the Pakistani tourists to visit India," Tourism Joint Secretary Rajiv Talwar told UNI."If the half a million target is achieved, Pakistan will be on par with India's best tourist markets like the UK and the US," he said.

Mr Talwar said at least 30 to 50 per cent of the Pakistani tourists visiting India are high spenders. This again throws a fresh challenge for the creation of more quality rooms.

Tourism Minister Ambika Soni said even while exploring new tourism markets, her ministry is concentrating on increasing the tourism infrastructure to hold the growing rush of tourists.

In this context, she said the government was facing a new challenge with the Commonwealth Games due in 2010 which will require additional 35,000 accommodation in budget and other categories in the capital city.

Hospitality industry sources point out that construction has been going on for an additional 40,000 rooms, most of these could be occupied only in 2007-08.

The tourism boom is also reflected in the growth of India's aviation sector in recent years after it was opened up to private carriers.

The competition has brought down fares and in the process attracted more passengers, giving a boost to domestic tourism.

Aviation officials estimate the number of air travellers to grow from the current 15 million a year to some 40 to 50 million in five years.

This will force a fresh need for more hotel rooms to meet the requirement of domestic tourists which is expected to grow substantially with the growth in air travellers.

UNI