With barely a week left to go for the much-awaited Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024, top hotels in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar are surprisingly sitting on just 40% to 50% room occupancy during the three day event. Amid expectations of big ticket investments by Elon Musk’s Tesla, the international conclave being touted as India’s Davos moment, is hardly finding many takers belying expectations that it would be a mega crowd puller.
The summit, being held after a five year hiatus largely on account of Covid-triggered cancellations, is scheduled to be heldin Gandhinagar fromJanuary 10 to January 12, 2024. Anticipating a surge of bookings, most of the big hotels in Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad have already hiked room rents by 3X to 10X. But in view of the tepid bookings received so far, this price rise now seems a little over ambitious for the hotel and hospitality industry.
Arya further said, “We have an average occupancy of 40% to 45% for the Vibrant Gujarat dates thus far. Other city hotels too have an average 50% occupancy. Despite a lack of inbound interest till now, we are keeping our fingers crossed that city hotels will witness a 100% occupancy in the days to come as we are expecting a lot of corporate invitees.”
As things stand, the industry players have increased their prices up to ten fold. The rentals for one key in Grand Mercure Gandhinagar GIFT City (during the Vibrant Gujarat summit) is being quoted at Rs 40,500 per key compared to normal rental of Rs 4,500 per key.
Similarly, the Taj Gandhinagar Resort and Spa has affected a 8X price rise to Rs 76,000 per key from Rs 9,900 per key normal rent. Most of the hotels in Ahmedabad have jacked up rates three to five fold. The current rentals for Crowne Plaza, Radisson Blu and Novotel are between Rs 15,000 to Rs 23,000 compared to their normal rental between Rs 5,400 to Rs 6,500. The prices in Taj Skyline Ahmedabad are also faring at Rs 55,000 against the normal tariff of Rs 6,750 per key.
A top hotelier who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “This year, demand for rooms during Vibrant Gujarat is not at par with the previous Summit in 2019. Radisson Blu in Ahmedabad is sitting over at least 20 rooms that are not booked yet. In the 9th edition of the summit the average price for a room was around Rs 25,000 while this year it pegged at around Rs 15,000 to Rs 18,000.”
However, allaying fears of muted demand for rooms, Pathik S Patwari, President, Gujarat Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said, “I have my reservations in believing that there is a less enthusiasm among invitees for the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024. We have more partner countries and partner organisations compared to previous summits. The reason for the less average occupancy in hotels can be put down to tne fact that the Vibrant Gujarat summit has a different format now. For earlier editions Vibrant Gujarat was an novel concept for India.
However, since it has spawned many me-toos in almost all states, this may have adversely affected some inter-state visitor numbers. Furthermore, for this summit, the Gujarat Government has focused on expanding the summit’s footprint to other parts of the state also. Until now the government has successfully organised around 55 pre-Vibrant Gujarat summits at the city and district-level in the state. Hence the summit is no longer concentrated in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar and this may have impacted inbound visitors for the main show.”
He went on to add, ” We should also look at the room availability number in 2019 and in 2024 while comparing occupancies The number of available rooms in these two cities have increased by at least 35% to 40%. This means that lesser overall room occupancy does not necessarily mean less influx of visitors. On a plus side, the increased availability of rooms has resulted in controlled prices for rooms during the summit and the average prices for a key have come down to below Rs 20,000”
