Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 20: Jammu Hotels, Restaurant and Bar Association (JHRBA) has expressed great concern over acute financial distress being faced by the hotels in Jammu and has appealed the Government to help the sinking hotel industry.
In a meeting held under the chairmanship of Raju Chowdhary, president of JHRBA and Managing Director (MD) of Hotel Ramada Jammu City Centre, the Association members said that hotel industry of Jammu has already been on the ventilator since August 2019 and with the recent unprecedented pandemic the hotels have been closed since March 2020.
“When the new guidelines for opening up were released by the Government allowing hotels to operate, it was expected that some business will start but various issues have cropped up which have brought the hotels to a standstill and most of the hotels have not been able to restart their operations,” they added.
The Association members said that all the air passengers are being sent to Katra for compulsory quarantine thus leaving the Jammu hotels in lurch as they are dependent on the air traffic for their occupancy and with the air passengers being sent to Katra, it has just added to the woes.
Stating that as per MHA guidelines, wedding functions of up to 50 people would be done, they said that practically there is a lack of communication to the ground level and lot of times, hotels are being harassed by the local police and revenue officials.
President JHRBA urged the Government to help the beleaguered hotel Industry to stand on its feet by giving the air passengers option of staying at different hotels in Jammu, allow home delivery of alcoholic beverages and waive minimum demand charges for the lockdown period so that in this time of zero inflow of revenue, hotels are not saddled with heavy electricity bills.
Rattandeep Singh Anand, MD Hotel Asia, Chander Gupta, MD Hotel Fortune Inn Riviera Jammu, Vikram Gupta, MD Hotel Radisson Blu, Chaitanya Chowdhary, MD Hotel Zone By The Park, Siddhant Chowdhary, Director Hotel Ramada Jammu City Centre and Sanjeev Prabhakar, MD Hotel Anutham also attended the meeting.
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