Weddings, conferences leave no room for visitors in Delhi hotels

If you thought getting stuck in Delhi’s traffic for hours, waiting for a baraat procession to pass, was the worst thing one had to deal with on Wednesday, then you are wrong. With Delhi witnessing a huge number of weddings, the day was not as auspicious for those who landed in the city without a hotel reservation and could not find rooms in most hotels across NCR.Those who did manage to find a hotel room had to pay thrice the usual tariff, as most hotels had increased the fare after a surge in demand. “It has never been this difficult to get a hotel reservation in Delhi. I am a frequent visitor to the city and usually manage to get a hotel room in central Delhi whenever I am here for business meetings. This time, every hotel I went to had full occupancy. Some hotels in other NCR cities, like Ghaziabad, were charging Rs 18,000 per day, when the usual tariff is Rs 5,000 per day. I had to check in at a hotel in Aerocity after trying my luck at all hotels in central and east Delhi, the areas where I prefer to stay. I was told that on December 12 and 13, it will be almost impossible to find a hotel room in Delhi without prior reservation,” said Mohit Arora, who was visiting Delhi for a business meeting for two days. After December 7 – the most auspicious day of this wedding season, when reportedly 25,000-35,000 weddings took place in Delhi alone – December 12 was the next most popular wedding date.

However, wedding are not the sole reason behind the chaos. Hotels say that there were also a number of business conferences in Delhi on the same day. “We had full occupancy from December 10 to December 14. It is not just wedding guests who have reservations with us, but also corporate guests, who are in Delhi for a conference at India Expo Centre in Greater Noida. Every year during the wedding season, we have days with high occupancy, but we are completely sold out for roughly four days this year because of the conference plus a large number of weddings,” said Gaurav Shrivastav, revenue manager, Crowne Plaza New Delhi, Rohini.
A spokesperson from Radisson Blu MBD Hotel, Noida, also said that most hotels even in Mayur Vihar and Greater Noida were booked much in advance because of the conference as well as several weddings. “We are fully sold out from December 11 to December 13 due to corporate travel demand,” he added.
While the mid-level business hotels in the city were completely booked for weddings and business conferences, luxury and high-end hotels said that December is anyway a busy month for them, with maximum tourists and expats visiting the city. “We have three hotels – in Gurgaon, Chanakyapuri and east Delhi – and all were sold out. All three had bookings of different nature. While the first two was mostly reserved by business and luxury travellers and partly by those visiting the city for weddings, the one in east Delhi was reserved for weddings. So, apart from weddings and business conferences, the reason why it is almost impossible to find a hotel room in Delhi around this time is because it is peak tourist season. This is the season when most expats and diplomats visit Delhi,” said a spokesperson from a luxury hotel chain in Delhi.

The surge in demand resulted in hotels increasing their tariff by almost 60%. One hotel in central Delhi said that they had a few rooms left on December 12 and the tariff was thrice the regular rate. “But the demand was so high, that even those were booked in the first half of the day,” said a spokesperson from the hotel. “Even those hotels that did not have any wedding reservations or business clients took advantage of the situation and increased the tariff to Rs 25,000-40,000 per day, when their regular tariff is Rs 5,000-8,000. It usually happens during the December wedding season, when the tourist inflow is also high,” said Tarun Gupta, Director, Sales & Marketing, Holiday Inn New Delhi, Mayur Vihar.