With 60% occupancy rate, southern districts hotel owners strive to attract tourists

Though the number of tourists visiting seashores, temples or hill stations is always on the rise, hoteliers in southern districts are of the opinion that the average occupancy rate is just 60 per cent. They say that they are striving hard to increase it.

The problem here is that most people visiting the southern districts follow a regular pattern when they visit a destination. For instance, when they want to visit Rameswaram, they land at Madurai and then visit Dhanushkodi, Ramanathapuram and Rameswaram. Even to visit Kodaikanal or Kanniyakumari, many of them prefer to check in at Madurai. They do not try to explore any other ways and means and therefore many of the areas which have high potential for tourism remain untapped. This in turn, resulted in decreased occupancy rate in hotels in southern districts, they said.

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According to Vasudevan, Director of Pandiyan Hotel the occupancy rate of the hotels in the southern districts is around 60 percentage. With new players entering the tourism sector the rate is further set to decrease.

The only solution to counter the decline is to increase the inflow of tourists. Hence, hoteliers and tour operators should come forward to work together, he said. Vasudevan pointed out at the problem with tariff too. “Five years before, the tariff in Rameswaram hotels was decided by the hoteliers but now it is the tourists who decide it. I attribute this only to decrease in occupancy rate,” he said.

The only solution is to bring new tourists to the area and hence unconventional tourist areas would be focused. “When tourists reach Tamil Nadu, they visit Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai, Thanjavur and then reaches Madurai. All the way the tourists sees only temples and when they land in Madurai again temple is highlighted. Hence, they had decided to focus more on the culture and day to day life of people of southern districts.

All these are not possible by a single brand or a single chain of restaurants. Hence, all hoteliers and travel agents had come forward and formed a brand named ‘Tamil Nadu Travel Mart’ to develop tourism in a new and unconventional manner without missing on the regular places, said Vasudevan.