Hotel, resort rooms sold out as demand soars this Christmas

New Delhi: The domestic hospitality industry is gearing up to make the most of full-fledged Christmas and New Year celebrations this time around after two years of washout by the pandemic, with rooms at many hotels and resorts already sold out.

As people seek to make up for the winter holidays lost to Covid-19, destinations like Karjat, Lonavala, Vizag, Dharamshala, Udaipur, Manali and Gir are witnessing good demand, apart from traditional popular places like Goa, Kerala and Shimla. "The year-end festive season looks very positive and this year appears to be one of the best years so far for the hospitality sector," Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Ltd Managing Director, Vijay Dewan said in an e-mailed response. He further said, "All our hotels are gearing up for sold out spaces along with high occupancy in rooms. This year we have lined up some great events during Christmas and New Year's which the guests missed out during the last 2 years due to the pandemic."

Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd (MHRIL) Managing Director and CEO Kavinder Singh, "If you really look at it this year, this Christmas and New Year will be the first proper Christmas-New Year after 2020...if I were to look at December occupancy, in some of our resorts we have no space for even a single room available in December because people have all booked up." Even in 2021, he said the Christmas and New Year celebrations were marred after the outbreak of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19, which continued beyond January.