Mysuru's hotel industry looks up as New Year's revelers book 80% rooms

There seems to be good tidings for Mysuru's hotel industry.

As Christmas and New Year approach, 80 per cent of the hotel rooms in the city are already booked by tourists.

After two and a half years of Covid-19 pandemic, tourism stakeholders are seeing advanced bookings for the year-end for the first time.

Also, they are expecting at least 10 per cent additional tourists to Mysuru, compared to 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic. The trend of revenge tourism seems to be continuing.

While there are over 10,300 rooms in 415 hotels in Mysuru, the bookings for hotel rooms started one month ago.

The rooms are booked for December 23 to January 2. While 50 per cent of the rooms are booked by tourists from states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the rest are booked by domestic tourists from Karnataka, mainly Bengaluru. All rooms are likely to be booked by the weekend," said C Narayan Gowda, president, Mysuru Hotel Owners' Association.

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"We have got 80 per cent bookings for vehicles for the past 10 days. We have bookings for December 22 to January 15," said C A Jayakumar, president, Mysuru Travel Agents Association.

About special tour packages for the year-end, he said, "Since tourist inflow is good, packages or events like winter festival are not required to woo tourists. The district administration has not invited private tourism stakeholders for an opinion on the winter fest. We believe that such fests should be hosted during the lean period, when the inflow of tourists is lean".

He added: "If our long demand to set up a Dasara Authority is met, it can also function as Tourism Authority for Mysuru, so that events can be planned in advance to attract tourists round the year".

Jayakumar said, "Even though private tourism stakeholders are ready to contribute and host events like Mysuru shopping festival, there is not adequate support from the government. There should be a nodal person, who can function as a single window to get permissions from all authorities, including the police and the city corporation".