Hotels, restaurants in city may not open tomorrow

Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, June 6

Even as the government has allowed hotels to open from Monday, most hoteliers have said they might not resume their services from June 8.

The hotel owners have said the strict guidelines issued by the Centre earlier and by the state government today were not conducive for them to start operations as of now.

“We understand concerns of the government with respect to the safety of people but our business will not be viable under these conditions,” they said.

Owner of Hotel Radisson Gautam Kapoor has said, “We are not opening up on Monday. How can we open when flights and trains are not operating and there is no business happening around? Most of our clientele is from Mumbai and Delhi, which are the worst affected cities. Till the time people from these cities plan to travel to Jalandhar for some business opportunity, we will not have our rooms booked. Even if we have booking for just 10 rooms, we will have to run our centralised AC system. The power prices are so high, that it will not be viable.”

He said: “The state government said today that people could not dine out and they will have to take away the cooked food. There already had been restrictions on movement after 9 pm. People tend to go to hotels and bars after 9 pm. Hence, there is no point even opening up restaurants.”

Likewise, the owner of Hotel Country Inn and Suits Kamaljit Hayre too is not sure if he will be opening it as he said: “We may not open on Monday. We want to watch the situation and make complete assessment before starting. We will hold a meeting tomorrow to take the final call.”

Anil Chopra, who owns three hotels in the city, also holds a similar opinion: “I do not think that opening up immediately will benefit us in anyway. We will have to see as we cannot just keep on adding up our costs when the income may be negligible as of now.”