Good time for Hotel industry to grow

Chennai, Sep 23 (UNI) The Hotel Industry in south is buoyant, thanks to the boom in Information Technology, IT Enabled Services and Automobile sector.

Addressing a press conference here after his unanimous re-election as President of the South India Hotels and Restaurants Association (SIHRA), Mr M P Purushothaman said as many as 124 new hotel projects had been taken up in the south.

The projects included 54 in Karnataka, 29 in Tamil Nadu, 15 in Andhra Pradesh and 12 in Kerala, he said adding that the industry was poised for tremendous growth in the coming years.

"Additional rooms are coming in and the industry scenario is very good," he said.

He said the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) had projected that there would be a need for 4000 quality room in the city alone in four years time.

Unfortunately, getting approvals for hotel projects was still an enormous task. In the absence of a single window system, it required as many as 22 approvals to build a hotel, he said.

Thanks to the boom in the IT, ITES and automobile sectors, the occupancy was nearly 70 to 80 per cent in most of the hotels in the south, Mr Purushothaman said.

The executive of the association, which met here, also re-elected Mr Shankar Menon (Empee hotels and Resorts, Chennai), Mr Syama Raju (Hoel Maurya, Bangalore), Mr Suresh M Pillai (Hotel Horizon, Thiruvananthapuram) and Mr Rajiv Narain (Hotel Golkonda, Hyderabad) as Vice-Presidents.

Mr T Natarajan of GRT Hotels and Resorts, Chennai was re-elected as Honorary Secretary, Mr K Murali Rao, New Woodlands Hotel, Chennai was re-elected as Honorary Treasurer.

UNI WS AJ 1711