Hotel occupancy rate rises to over 70% in Q2 as travel picks up; experts decode

As the country continues to ease COVID restrictions people are returning to try out travel and leisure destinations. To know more about the hotel occupancies and other business plans, CNBC-TV18 spoke to industry experts Vishal Kamat, Director, Kamat Group and Amit Jaiswal, CFO, Royal Orchid.

Kamat said across India travel has definitely grown as the COVID cases have come down after the second wave. Most of the states now have negligible cases and people are becoming more aware.

"Monday to Thursday would be a dull period where you would probably have to fill that up with some corporate conferencing or team-building exercise or some kind of event like that. But now you find that people are willing to come if they are getting good discounts and based on the holidays that they are able to have on their job or continue their online work at the holiday, they are coming from Monday to Monday as well. That is one big boost that we see, which was not there in pre- pandemic and this has been helping the industry a lot.”

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Talking about occupancies for them in the second quarter, Kamat said they have been over 70 percent. However, that based on various challenges that are there at the local level, Maharashtra tourism has been struggling more than probably other states.

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Royal Orchid Hotels, in the press release yesterday, said they have opened five hotels. Amit Jaiswal said their leisure destination hotels have also seen 70 plus percentage occupancies and business hotels are also doing 65-70 percent occupancy right now. “We have opened five hotels and this is the time when a lot of opportunities are available in the market and we are trying to encash on that. There are more hotels in the pipeline to open, “said Jaiswal.

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