With India under a 3-week lockdown, hoteliers stuck with empty rooms are finding new ways to fill them.
They’ve begun offering steeply discounted rates to stranded travelers, quarantined individuals as well as air and sea crews. And some have even taken the step of offering free rooms to doctors, nurses and first responders.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across India with 691 confirmed cases so far, hotel owners and aggregators are working with the federal and state authorities to make their rooms available to people affected by the crisis. The government has instituted caps on the room rates the hotels can charge and also mandated strict hygiene protocols that includes periodic checks by designated medical officers.
Aggregators such as Oyo, which counts SoftBank and AirbBnB as investors, Fab Hotels with investors like Accel and Qualcomm and mid-tier hotel chains such as BSE-listed Lemon Tree are taking part in various government programs in different states.
“As and when we receive directives from government officials, we open up inventory in certain hotels for pay and use quarantine facilities for asymptomatic guests only,” says Rattan Keswani, deputy managing director at Lemon Tree Hotels. “Our teams have a strict mandate to follow the instructions of the authorized medical official in the premises, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of every person, guest and team member.”
Today In: Forbes
The rates on offer are typically at a 40% to 50% discount to usual rates, which is better than the prospect of unsold rooms.
Fab Hotels said that it’s also reaching out to the federal and state authorities. The budget hotel chain has a total of seven properties in Kolkata that have been offered to the government combined with ten hotels in Karnataka and another ten in Delhi.
No comments:
Post a Comment