Category Archives: Associations

An estimated USD 4.5 to 5 billion of funding will be required to overcome this crisis, mostly for airlines. Excluding IndiGo, the cash position of the industry as on 31-Mar-2020 was just USD 200 million (IndiGo had USD 1.36bn). The current low oil prices and excess liquidity, both globally and in India, would ordinarily have been positive for the sector. But the industry will not be able to fully benefit or raise funds due to structural issues.

The state has issued a directive that allows all hotels and lodges to operate at 100 per cent capacity from September 2, 2020. Separate SOPs will be issued for necessary precautions to be taken while operating these establishments. Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, President, Hotel & Restaurant Association of Western India, says, “We are happy that the government has allowed 100 per cent capacity utilisation for hotels in the state. Meanwhile, since restaurants are not included in the current negative list, it is understood that restaurants are also allowed to re-open like those that have re-opened in the rest of the country. We have sought clarification on this from the government. Also, we had hoped that it would relax the limit of 50 people at social gatherings, especially for weddings. We had requested that this be based on the size of the venue.”

Manish Kriplani, MD, Baywatch Travels, has launched Baywatch Stayzz, which include serviced luxury villas and houses for rent. “There was a huge void of having luxury full-service villas, where travellers can relax with having dedicated butler service, and housekeeper, chef and other resources at their disposal. We found that there was demand and availability for the same, which was a great prospect. We have 9 villas as of now and we plan to have 50 such villas in the next 2-3 months in Chennai. While some villas we are obtaining on lease, some are on revenue share, while for others we are only doing sales & marketing. While we have made PDF brochures now, we are preparing a very robust e-commerce website portal, where we are going to host all these villas and which will have all the information about them.”

Ravi Gosain, MD, Erco Travels, has said that with moratorium limit ending on 31st August, many travel companies must shut down. “Situation is very unfavourable for tourism industry. On 31st August, moratorium is ending, and most of the people, whether employees or employers took a moratorium and were expecting that something will roll out. However, things haven’t improved. From September onwards, I don’t think companies of any size are able to pay a single bill. Hence, this will be a huge setback. Hence, I am sure there will be many bankruptcies after this moratorium has ended,” he shared.

Serafino Cota, President, Small & Medium Hotels Associations, says, “Our members don’t want to keep their hotels open right now. While the government is trying to show that it opening the state to tourism, it is not extending any help to us. Even if we get one guest with great difficulty for a few days, the government marks the hotel as ‘operational’ and then they start charging you for full electricity, water bill, etc. So people prefer to close it altogether. We have decided to open only in September 2021.”  

FHRAI has requested Minister of Finance and the RBI for an extension of moratorium for an additional 3 months, adding that 90% of the hospitality sector could be declared as NPAs post August 31. In another move, it has requested Ministry of Home Affairs for relaxing of quarantine norms for domestic travellers as well as permission to open bars and banquet halls, among others.

The ‘COVID-19 and Transforming Tourism’ policy brief from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns that economic damage to the global tourism sector is likely to exceed $1 trillion in 2020 alone, with up to 120 million jobs at risk.

The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) has made written representations to the Hon. Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman, the Hon. Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur and to the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Shaktikanta Das, I.A.S. requesting for an extension of moratorium for additional three months. The hotel industry has made no progress in terms of bookings even after several states unlocked and where hotels resumed operations. The industry has registered average occupancy levels at 10 to 20 per cent. With rental and salary bills, statutory payments and other establishment costs, hotels are finding it unviable to carry on running businesses. FHRAI has informed the Ministry that an extension of moratorium at this time could help hotels restructure existing loans since the process of restructuring is time consuming. Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, Vice President of FHRAI and President of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI), says, “For more than four months, hotels and restaurants have remained shut and have earned no revenue throughout the lockdown. There is no improvement in forward bookings and wherever hotels and restaurants have opened, the footfalls are negligible. In addition to the monthly outgoings and the statutory levies, we now have to spend more on employing hygiene and safety measures to follow the SOPs and guidelines issued by the Central and State governments. On account of all this, the debt restructuring plan announced by the RBI for the stressed MSMEs is not going to help the sector. Therefore we have urged that the moratorium be extended by a further three months.”

FAITH and its cause partner AIRDA, have requested the negative travel advisory from the USA to India to be addressed. FAITH Associations have requested the tourism minister to urgently take it up with Minister of External Affairs, for him to take up with his American counterpart for an immediate revision. The United States of America recently released a travel advisory, which rated level 4 for India (as on 23rd Aug 2020). On a scale of 1-4 this is the highest level of risk rating, carrying with it the advice of ‘do not travel’. As stated, reasons for the same, apart from restrictive COVID-19 protocols, the rating highlights terrorism, crimes against women and insurgency among others as concerns. The associations under FAITH have claimed that USA is the most important long-haul source market for India for most segments of travel. As India has begun the process of opening up its air corridors, such an advisory for India is detrimental to kickstarting all leisure, business & mice tourists from the USA. Additionally, travel advisory as such from the United States of America tends to send a wrong signal for the rest of the developed countries as they start opening up their international air travel. This advisory appears to have been last updated on 6th August 2020. The favourable revision of the travel advisory would be a big boost in beginning the process of creating a positive sentiment for travel, which will slowly put in motion revival for the inbound tourism industry

As part of the panel during a webinar on risk management recently, Anoop Kanuga, MC Member of Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and Head of its Tourism Council, said, “Training existing talent to improve efficiencies will take precedence in the current situation. Digitization will play an important role and travel agencies will have to ensure that they are equipped with appropriate digital infrastructure to be ahead of the curve. Those who are nimble and are able to move quickly and address the changing needs of the traveller will emerge as winners in the long run.”