Friday, January 30, 2009

Incredible Bed and Breakfast Scheme improvements!

The Delhi government has revised the guidelines of the Delhi Bed and Breakfast scheme to make it more popular and rolled it across the whole country to make it acceptable across the country.


“The Incredible India Bed and Breakfast guidelines have been revised so that all state governments can adopt this scheme in their own states and increase the availability of rooms for tourists,” said a senior Tourism Ministry official.

While the emphasis has been given on less paper work in the revised guidelines, the maximum number of rooms is being increased from 5 to 6.

The changed guidelines has authorized the state governments to allocate categories of their own, devise their own fee structure and have their own classification committee which should be headed by an officer not below the rank of gazetted officer in the state tourism department or its equivalent.

The Ministry has also devised Dos and Don’ts for the house owners suggesting them how to conduct themselves as registered establishment and the activity has to be treated as non-commercial.

Delhi government has enacted a law for the scheme to extend benefit of taxation of property, electricity and water charges to be paid as per residential rates.
Himachal and Uttar Pradesh have also allowed similar incentives for the Bed and Breakfast scheme.

“All state governments have been asked to provide certain incentives so that the scheme can become popular and help in addressing the shortage of hotel rooms all over the country,” said the official.
Ministry is also planning to undertake capacity building programme for the benefit of such house owners who are willing to implement the scheme.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Hotel chains opt out of Delhi Commonwealth Games

Fearing poor visitor turnout for the Commonwealth Games in the wake of recession, six hoteliers and bnb New Delhi establishments, which were alloted plots for construction of hotels for the mega sporting event have developed cold feet.

"These six hoteliers after getting land did not come forward to obtain necessary clearances for beginning the construction of hotels. So, we are recommending for cancellation of their plots," said a senior Delhi government official.

The alloted hotel sites facing cancellation are at Anand Vihar, Mandavali, Vivek Vihar, Mayur Vihar and Alipur Road.

DDA had auctioned 33 sites in the capital for construction of hotels keeping the forthcoming Commonwealth Games in mind.

"Now with six already out of the project we have to expedite the construction work of other proposed hotels to meet the deadline before the Games," the official said and added, "We have offered incentives to these hoteliers for completing the construction before June 2010."

Tourism Ministry is hopeful of making available about 6,000 rooms during the Games out of these new hotels.

The Games Village is being developed by the DDA to provide accommodation as well as training facilities to 8,000 athletes and officials during the Games.

Besides the Game Village, DDA is also constructing flats in Vasant Kunj which would be utilised for the sporting event.

"We expect about 5,000 rooms to be made available for visitors during the Games in Vasant Kunj. ITDC will provide necessary arrangement for the staying of visitors in these flats," the official said.

Meanwhile, global recession has adversely affected the foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) in the country.

While 5.96 lakh foreign tourists had come to India in December 2007, their number reduced to 5.22 lakh in December 2008, which is a negative growth of minus 12.5 per cent.

The FTA had also registered a negative growth of minus 2.1 per cent in November 2008.

However, Tourism Ministry is hopeful that the situation will not remain the same in 2010.

It has undertaken a series of confidence building measures to minimize the negative impact of the recent global economic meltdown.

"Visit India 2009" scheme is being launched whereby attractive incentives by way of value additions would be offered to foreign tourists visiting the country during the period from April to December this year.

The ministry is also organising a series of road shows in UK, Australia, Japan, USA, Canada and other important tourist generating overseas markets.

With this bad news, hopefully the commonweatlh games will not be cancelled.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Tax Holiday for 5 star hotels in Delhi.

The Delhi government has been asked to extend tax holiday for all hotel categories, including five-star, specially in the national capital keeping in mind the requirements for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

In the Budget of 2007-08, five-year tax holiday was given to two, three and four star hotels (but not too 5 star hotels) and convention centres with a seating capacity of not less than 3,000 in the NCR.

"This facility needs to be extended to all categories of hotels, including five-star hotels and bed and breakfast New Delhi, so that their capacity expansion takes place at a desired speed to accommodate large number of tourists expected during 2010 games," it said.

The hotel infrastructure, specially in five-star category and the Bnb's in Delhi and NCR where majority of tourists are likely to stay, is still not taking off and therefore to speed up their capacity, five years tax holiday schemes requires to be extended, it added.

A proposal has been sent to Ministry of Finance demanding that infrastructure status for hotel industry should not be delayed any longer, since the sector is highly capital intensive.

Each five star hotel is built with capital investments, ranging from Rs 300 crore to Rs 500 crore, it said.

As per the chamber estimates, keeping in mind the requirement of hotel rooms during the games, in NCR, around 27 new hotels are coming up with about 4,900 rooms in various categories over next three to four years.

As per estimates, the Commonwealth Games in 2010 is expected to attract 50,000 foreign visitors to Delhi and about 30,000 rooms would be required to accommodate these visitors.

The National Capital Region, currently, has about 10,500 rooms and an additional 15,000 to 18,000 rooms are required to take care of the foreign tourists during the event

New Power station for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

The 2010 Commonwealth Games will catapult Delhi on to the world center-stage. Every country's eyes will be on us. This will also give an opportunity to showcase our accomplishments and put our best foot forward. Uninterrupted power supply will play a pivotal role in this," Dikshit said.

The chief minister stated that new sub-station would be constructed on the green building concept at an estimated cost of Rs.400 million by December.

This sub-station would not only cater to the needs of Commonwealth Games Village but also ensure uninterrupted power supply to all nearby colonies across east Delhi. This will benefit the Delhi Bed and Breakfast as well, as it is located in an area which will benefit form the new Power station.

Dikshit complimented the role of Delhiites in making the conservation drive successful and restricting power consumption and further exhorted them to conserve power.

Though the capacity of this grid station will be 25 MVA, BSES (power distribution company) is planning to install two 25 MVA transformers.

"Of this one will be primary and the other one its back up. This is being done to take care of any unforeseen eventuality and contingency. Even if the primary transformer fails for some reason, the backup transformer will immediately take over and ensure continuance of uninterrupted power supply," a power department official said.

Commonwealth to be shifed to Melbourne?

Melbourne is ready to step in and host the 2010 Commonwealth Games if the event is pulled from New Delhi, a report said Sunday.

The four-yearly Games, featuring 71 teams from Commonwealth countries, are due to be held in the Indian capital from October 3-14, 2010, but concerns remain over construction of its sporting and transport infrastructure.

Building delays have already forced this year’s world badminton championships to be shifted to the southern city of Hyderabad.

In November, Commonwealth Games Federation co-ordination committee chairman Austin Sealy said India could miss out on hosting the Games if a dispute over the construction of the athletes’ village was not resolved.

The Melbourne Age, citing senior sports officials, said the Victorian state government had discussed contingency plans to host the event which it last held just three years ago.

One of the officials, who declined to be named, said that while Melbourne had not been asked to step in, “if things don’t improve (in Delhi), we will.”

Another official added that if Delhi was unable to host the Games, Melbourne would likely be asked to do so.

“It would be an obvious thing to do. Melbourne had it last, so they know we’ve got the infrastructure and facilities,” the official said.

But Lalit Bhanot, general secretary of the Delhi Games organising committee, bristled at the suggestions.

“There is no possibility of a shift in venue for the Commonwealth Games and there is no reason to do it,” he told the newspaper.

“I don’t know why this issue comes up. There should not be one percent of doubt about Delhi staging the Games.”

Delhi is already facing accomodation shortage and therefore bed and breakfast Delhi scheme has been launched many, many moons ago. Still the bed and breakfast's are finding it hard to fill their rooms. Hopefully commonwealth games will chamnge all that.