Hoteliers seek FSI on par with IT sector

Chennai, May 20: The South India Hotels and Restaurants Association today appealed to the Tamil Nadu Government to increase the floor space index (FSI)for hotel buildings, on par with the IT sector in the State.

Association President M P Purushothaman told newsmen here that presently IT parks were granted an FSI of 1:3 while hotel buildings were given the same FSI as any high raise building. High cost of land, lack of centrally located land area in key business districts coupled with the low FSI was acting as a detrimental factor in atttracting fresh investments to hotel sector, he added.

The demand for rooms was increasing and the estimates indicate the need for more than 4000 additional rooms in Tamil Nadu alone in the next few years. To address this, he said it is essential that existing hotels increased their capacity, he said.

He said states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have realised this need and have liberalised their building rules to offer extra FRI to hotel and IT industry.

He said the association had already submitted a detailed memorandum to the State Government in this regard and it is high time the government granted additional FSI to the existing hotels which had good business. Additional investment was not a constraint for them.

Mr Purushothaman also pointed out that in the last few years, almost all the regional airports located here, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kochi and Thiruvanandapuram had become international airports. Due to the growing business of IT, ITES and auto sector the arrival of foreign technicians has improved multifold.Almost all the flights land and take off around midnight and the passengers waiting in transit had to be provided accommodation with the facilities they expect, he said.

He said our domestic regulation of the bar timings ending at mid night does put a lot of impediments in the normal life style pattern of foreigners. While they fully supported the local Governments' efforts to maintain law and order, they appealed to the Government to grant flexible timings to operate the bars in approved hotels atleast till 0200 hrs to entertain the foreign guests arriving late, he added.

He said the Government should also reduce the luxury tax from the existing 12 per cent to 10 per cent and give industry status for the hospitality industry with the applicable electricity tariff.

To a question, he said 112 new hotels of various star catagories were coming up in the Souther states, of which 29 were in Tamil Nadu, 54 in Kerala, 15 in Karnataka, 12 in Andhrapradesh and two in Pondicherry.

UNI