With new restrictions in place, in light of the Omicron variant of COVID, the hospitality sector is once again facing the heat. Just as the industry was gearing up for the festive season and hoping to make up for lockdown months, they will be required to adhere to a slew of instructions notified by the various States in this regard.
States like Delhi have imposed night curfew from 11 pm onwards, whereas Maharashtra has imposed night curfew from 9 pm to 6 am. Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya, Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu have imposed night curfew as well. What's important is that no end date has been announced for Maharashtra's timing restrictions.
To understand what this means for the hospitality sector, CNBC-TV18, spoke to Anjan Chatterjee, Chairman and MD of Speciality Restaurants, and Rattan Keswani, Deputy MD of Lemon Tree Hotels.
Chatterjee reiterated the popular senttiment of the current COVID restrictions being a dampener. He said, “At the moment, it is controlled because people have to come out at any given point of time, but the restrictions are slightly a dampener. We have to look forward to things stabilizing, fingers crossed Omicron would behave better so that we will be able to have more people.”
He mentioned that December has been impacted even as the company witnessed a strong Q3.
He said, “October was very good because of the Diwali, Durga Puja, and then November also, in fact, Diwali came in November, so it was totally fine, going very well. December, which is a very large part of our revenue has been affected, but fingers crossed, things will be better in this quarter. In any case, historically, it's always been good.”
Meanwhile, Keswani said that they were hoping for a strong Q4, but will wait and watch for now.
He said, “Our first three quarters were successful; this month will end well, because anyway, commercial hotels don't really do much occupancy after the 20th of December till about the 5th of January. We were hoping for a very good Q4, all numbers suggested that we could be close to somewhere close to a pre-COVID level in occupancy terms but it will be a wait and watch.”
He explained that they haven’t been approached by the government for hotels to quarantine in.
Keswani said, “If the government had the need, we would be the first ones to take on the requests. Government has not yet approached but if we were to be approached, we would be happy to participate.”
Watch the video for the full interview.
Also Read: India COVID-19 highlights: Maharashtra imposes Section 144 at night; Omicron cases jump to 358
(Edited by : Dipikka Ghosh)
First Published: Dec 27, 2021 1:09 PM IST
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