'Crowd is there, but no pressure for rooms'

Mysore Dasara rush less than last year

Hotels in Mysore "" from star to ordinary - reported full occupancy on the day of Dasara finale. But the general feeling is, "Crowd is there, but there is no pressure on rooms." Some star hotels are fully booked, while a couple of others have been running full for 2-3 days.

"All our 54 rooms are booked up to October 14," says the reservation at Mysore's famous Palace-turned hotel, Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel.

"We have mostly groups. Two of them are from Germany and Britain," it says.

However, the reservation chief says, the pressure for rooms is somewhat lesser than than of last Dasara. Perhaps because, other star hotels have added additional accommodation.

Similar is the position at Kings Kourt, where, it says, "There is no room available today. All the rooms are taken."

"Rooms are easily available," says Hotel Siddarth front office manager Satheyndra Prabhu. He also says a large number of people have come to city. "But, they are mostly the locals and from within the state. Many bookings, particularly from Maharashtra and Gujarat were cancelled. Hotel bookings are affected because of the rains," he says.

He also blames the media for 'misguiding' the tourists. "Two months ago, they reported that hotels were full in Mysore. This was not true. Rooms are freely available even now," the manager says and adds, overall the bookings are good and the hotel is full since two days.

With 27 rooms, Hotel Mayura Palace has also been full occupancy for the last two days. "But tourist flow is less. There is nothing much to be said about bookings this time. Last Dasara was better," says Hotel Mayura Front Office Cashier Manjunath.

He is also of the opinion that most of the crowd seen this time in Mysore is local and from within the state, who prefer to stay with relatives.

However, the state tourism office is busy, handling between 200-250 enquiries a day since the commencement of Dasara, as against 8-10 on other days.

"More foreign visitors dropped into our office to seek information. Italians were more in numbers among them," says tourist officer Nagaraj.

Of the 30,000 tourist brochures available, over 25,000 were distributed at 20 tourist counters set up at different centres even before the Vijaya Dasami, he adds.

The city tours being offered by the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation continues to receive a good response, he says. The KSRTC conducts tours specially to a number of tourist spots in and around Mysore.