PANAJI
After struggling with poor occupancy rates in December, the hotel industry is gearing up for a recovery in January and the trend is looking good even for the next month. Hotels like Grand Mercure and Novotel in Candolim are sold out on the coming weekend and next.
Similarly, Alila Diwa and Taj Benaulim, in South Goa, are already sold out for the coming weekend. Siddharth Savkur, general manager, Alila Diwa, explained, “Russian Christmas falls on January 7 every year and typically this is when we used to see a lot of Russians earlier, but this didn’t happen this year. Therefore, the lull continued till January 10”.
He says, “After the first ten days of January, there is a really strong demand from domestic tourists. We are seeing good growth in the number of British tourists as well. Now, Goa has five direct flights from Middle-East and therefore more tourists are coming from this region also”.
British tourists can now avail of e-visa facility and that is the reason more Britishers are coming to Goa. Ralph de Sousa, chairman of de Souza Group, said, “January is definitely going to be a much better month for hotels than December. While business was low in the first half of December, three-star and four-star hotels are likely to have around 85-90% occupancy this month".
Besides, next weekend is going to be a long as January 26 is on a Monday. And, yet again, hotels will see a lot of tourists coming from Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and many smaller parts of India.
Room tariffs, however, have come down compared to New Year levels. de Sousa explained, “Repeat tourists know that hotels in Goa are really expensive around Christmas and New Year and many of them have postponed their trip to January”.
The tariff at Taj Aguada on December 30 was a whopping Rs 39,000 for a night, which has fallen to Rs 15,000 for the coming weekend of January 16. Similarly, tariffs, at most 5-star hotels, are believed to have come down to Rs 13,000 to Rs 20,000 per night in January, which has resulted in more tourists choosing to travel in this month.
