Hotel industry alert! How long will hospitality sector take to bounce back? Survey reveals eye-opening details

In a good news for hotel industry, the hospitality sector is all geared-up to reopen from June 8 with adequate safety protocols as per the latest Unlock 1 guidelines by the Modi government. After losing business for nearly a an entire quarter because of the lockdown, the million dollar question is - how long will hospitality sector take to bounce back to pre-Covid levels? To answer this, a survey has revealed some eye-opening details. According to Hotel and Restaurant Association of Eastern India secretary Sudesh Poddar citing a survey, the hospitality sector hopes to return to the pre-Covid levels within another 12- 18 months.

Moreover, the sector also looks forward to get 20-30 per cent occupancy in June-August and may have to wait till the fourth quarter of this fiscal, January-March 2021, to reach the 50 per cent level,  Sudesh Poddar said quoting the internal survey.

"We welcome the decision to reopen hotels. We had carried out an internal survey and it is found that hotels expect 20-30 per cent demand in the first quarter after lockdown, and to get around 50 per cent demand, they may have to wait till Q4 of the fiscal," Poddar said as in a guideline issued on Saturday, the Union home ministry said hotels and restaurants will be opened from June 8. "And it may take 12-18 months for the hotels to get back to the pre-COVID level occupancy," Poddar added.

In another survey of hotel general managers by HVS Anarock in April, 46 per cent of the respondents said occupancy would be below 40 per cent by Q4 of this financial year. Some 42 per cent of the general managers who took part in the online survey were more optimistic and they believe that occupancy will reach 50 per cent or near it by the January-March quarter. The survey was carried out among 180 hotels across categories, HVS South Asia President Mandeep S Lamba said.  According to HVS Anarock, in April, the occupancy in India was down by 81 per cent compared to April 2019.