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Sibabrata Das
GOA, May 17: Ramada Hotels (India) Ltd has put on hold its plans to invest Rs 65 crore in two new projects.
The company deferred its decision to start work last year for the Rs 45-crore five-star hotel project at Jaipur in Rajasthan because of the nuclear blast at Pokhran, despite having acquired land two-and-half-years back.
"There has been a drop in tourism to the state following the explosion. We will wait till the mood changes," said Sunder Advani, the chairman and managing director, Renaissance Goa Resort.
Advani said the Rs 20-crore project to run a casino in a ship has also been put on backburner.
"We would have begun last year. Now we will have to see which sort of government we have at the Centre," Advani said. Incidentally, Ramada Hotels had obtained a licence for the casino 17 months back.
Ramada Hotels (India), which owns and operates Renaissance Goa Resort, has already spent Rs 70 lakh for acquiring the land at Jaipur. The company will have to shell out the balance Rs 2 crore.
ThoughAdvani has ruled out any major investments this year, he said he would spend Rs 15 lakh towards improving the golf course and water-based activities. For the first time, Renaissance Resort saw a decline in room occupancy from 63 per cent to 53 per cent for the year ended March 1999.
As a result, the turnover decreased by 20 per cent to Rs 21 crore. "This was due to the resort being closed for renovation and drop in foreign tourist traffic because of the nuclear test and burning of Christian missionaries," Advani said.
With the drop in international tourism, Advani plans to perk up domestic demand. He is introducing specialised ayurvedic health packages and an exclusive health club for ladies. "Our thrust this year will be to lure domestic tourists," said Advani.
Towards this end, the hotel has started ad campaign featuring local models. In the last four weeks, the company spent Rs 20 lakh on TV commercials. "We have dropped the European model ads," said Advani.
Advani expects Renaissance's revenuefrom domestic tourism to increase with these recent measures. The contribution of foreign tourism to the resort's total turnover has dropped from 94 per cent to 89 per cent last year. "We expect this to further fall to 80 per cent as our business from domestic tourists go up," said Advani.
Advani is offering a millennium package to attract foreign tourists. Also, up his sleeve several cultural fusion programmes like inviting entertainment groups from different states and staging mock weddings. "Goa has been identified as the fifth most popular destination of the world in the UK market for the millennium year. We hope to benefit from this and boost up our average room occupancy to 65 per cent for the current financial year," said Advani.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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