Trouble has been brewing in Nagpur’s hospitality industry ever since last year’s lockdown, which left the industry completely paralysed. With bare minimum sales for months last year and no certainty as to when restaurants would revive their businesses, the industry stares at a dark future.

However, some restaurateurs in Nagpur heaved a sigh of relief after Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) recently permitted restaurants and bar to operate till 7 pm. All the restaurants and bars would have to operate at a 50% capacity. Action would be taken against anyone who is seen flouting COVID-19 norms. Apart from this, home delivery of food is permissible till 11 pm. Despite the partial relaxations, there seems to be a harsh reality that the hospitality sector is struggling to cope with…

Nagpur Residential Hotels Association (NRHA) President Tejinder Singh Renu said, Nagpur hotels mainly earn revenue from people coming for dinners over lunches. Usually very limited people wanting to have a business meet, etc., would come for lunch ? even before COVID-19 pandemic hit us. Majority people come for dinner and that’s what keeps the restaurants rolling.

He said, Shutting down restaurants and hotels by 7 pm makes no sense at all. We have requested NMC Commissioner B Radhakrishnan and Nagpur District Collector Ravindra Thakare to extend the timing till 11 pm. It’s not like the virus is more active during the evening. Plus, we’re ready to take all safety measures and follow protocols.

He added, Hotels earn primarily from tariffs generated from rooms, restaurants, and banquets. Now, due to pandemic, only 50% occupancy has made the situation difficult. Unlike other industry, our product is perishable. Once the night is gone and our room is unoccupied, we’ve lost the opportunity.

Renu added, Despite RBIs guidelines of restructuring loans, banks aren’t co-operating. There’s a huge problem in managing funds. Our usual turnover is around ₹2000 to ₹2500 crores annually. However, due to pandemic, we could hardly manage ₹800-900 crore in 2020-21. So certainly, we’ve incurred a revenue loss of around ₹1500 crore from Nagpur.

When we spoke to Angadh Arora, Director at Centre Point Group of Hotels & Resorts and co-owner at Pablo ? the Art Café Lounge, he said, The authorities have given us a time limit till 7 pm to operate our restaurants. Which customer prefers winding up his dinner by 7 pm? Moreover, when a customer comes for dinner at say 6 pm, we?d have to tell them that it would be their last order as 7 pm is the closing time.

He added, We at Hotel Centre Point have incurred almost Rs 4 crore losses in just one month (from mid February to mid March) as Nagpur people, due to uncertainty, shifted their wedding venues out of the state. Nagpur’s hotel association has incurred monthly losses of Rs 250 crores due to lockdown restrictions. Our high operational expenses that are being incurred for running the restaurant for a stipulated time are only worsening our businesses. So, in such a case, its only better if we don’t operate at all!