Besides Bangalore was the only city, among the four, to experience an increase in room yields by 5.2 per cent over the previous year. However, the average achieved room rate (AARR) went down by 7.8 per cent over the previous year, the PKF survey states.

The survey, however, says that Mumbai's occupancy fell two percentage points to 63.77 per cent in 1999-2000 while Chennai's occupancy fell by 2.6 per cent to 62.6 per cent.Occupancy in Delhi improved marginally by 0.8 per cent to 61.6 per cent over the previous year.

The survey covers hotels located in 52 cities spread over 34 countries worldwide. The survey, which includes 30 quality hotels from Indian cities in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore, will extend to Calcutta and Hyderabad next year. The demand for hotels in Bangalore were propelled by the corporate market which accounted for an 8 per cent increase over the previous year to 68 per cent of the total roomnights in 1999. Bangalore is home to scores of software firms as well as over 200 multinational companies. The city, which already has over 1,000 quality bedrooms, will have added capacity with the augmentation of 254-bedroom Leela Palace and 168-bedroom Krishna Continental.

The pressure on room rates, however, continued unabated with all four cities seeing a decline in average achieved room rates with Delhi at a high of 12.8 per cent and Chennai being the lowest at 3.6 per cent. Mumbai, at Rs 6,290, had the highest average achieved room rate in the country, followed by Delhi at Rs 5,239. Bangalore and Chennai follow next with Rs 4,541 and Rs 4,402 respectively, according to the survey.

During 2000-2001, Mumbai and Delhi are slated to see an addition of over 1,000 and 800 rooms with many more to follow in the next two years, the survey said.