Bhubaneswar: COVID-19 has not left any territory unaffected. The impact of the pandemic on the hotel industry is monumental. Particularly, the budget hotels and lodges in the state are very badly hit.
As per the information shared by the State Budget Hotel and Guest House Owners’ Association, a whooping five thousand employees of budget hotels and lodges in Bhuabneswar alone have so far been laid off. In the entire state, more than 20, 000 employees have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic with the owners of these hotels and lodges having suffered losses to the tune of crores.
There are about 5,000 registered budget hotels and guest houses in the state. And if the unregistered hotels are taken into account, the number is somewhere close to 7,500. These budget hotels and other unregistered hotels employed lakhs of youths from different parts of the state. The pandemic induced lockdowns and shutdowns have rendered these youths jobless who find it very difficult to meet their family expenses and make ends meet.
According to Manoj Kumar Biswal, president, State Budget Hotel and Guest House Owners’ Association, the guidelines issued by the state government for running hotels are only feasible for star hotels, not for the smaller hotels like ours. The guidelines say the hotels can function with 30 per cent occupancy. The bigger hotels are capable to absorb the losses if they do business with 30 per cent occupancy as they have more rooms. But in our case, we have generally 10 to 20 rooms in our hotels and 30 per cent means three to six rooms. It is not possible in our part to run the business with such fewer rooms. Those who are running their units are even not able to pay the rent of the buildings. This is the reason why most owners prefer to shut their hotels and are forced to axe their employees, he said.
“The budget hotels are generally running from buildings taken on lease. Even if our business has come down to next to nothing, the owners are collecting rents as they used to during the period prior to outbreak of pandemic COVID-19. Those units that are opening are spending an extra amount on sanitization. As if these were not enough, the BMC office is not issuing trade licenses to us even after doing several rounds of the office,” he alleged.
We had met the Tourism Minister and director and informed them the problems we are facing but nothing has been done as yet. The government should allow us to do business with 100 per cent capacity. And the building owners are to be directed not to collect rents from us. Or else, if the present situation continues for more days, the industry will completely collapse and its consequential impact will hit hard the employees who are still working at the units,” he added.
PNN