Heat causes tourism meltdown in Agra

The sweltering heat that has engulfed the entire Northern India in the past one week has begun playing havoc with the tourism industry of Agra.

As the unnaturally high temperature in the city is almost touching 47 degrees centigrade, the tourist traffic in Agra has abruptly come to a standstill. The worst hit is the local hospitality industry, which has begun offering huge discounts on the over 12,000 rooms available in the city's over 230 star category and budget class hotels.

While the budget hotels are still receiving a fair share in the shoe-string traveller traffic, the upper- and middle-end hotels are witnessing an unprecedented slump in the number of foreign guests arriving to stay in early May.

To tide over the operational expenses in these difficult times, almost all five-star deluxe and five-star hotels in the city are offering tremendous discounts of upto 50 percent on their room tariff to the guests yet some others were planning to go into a "hibernation" for these two months of May and June.

According to DK Burman, deputy director, UP tourism, the sudden rise in temperature had thrown the city's tourism industry into "off-season" while only a few weeks earlier, tourists were literally pouring into the city despite near 40 degrees temperature but in the past three days, the temperatures had touched 47 degrees and it had become quite "unsafe" for tourists unaccustomed to this heat, to move about in the large, shade less expanses of the monuments.

He said over the past year, the five-star hotels of Agra had invested over Rs 60-70 crore in the upgrade of their housing capacity and renovation of their buildings and similar amount was being spent currently by mid-level hotels to avail of the tourist traffic that was customary in the month of May but due to the unnatural slump in tourist traffic, the hotels had already begun running vacant which was not a good sign for the tourist trade.

According to Mr. Burman, as the temperature was not showing any signs of easing off in the coming weeks, the only option left for the hotels was to begin offering discounts and rooms worth almost Rs. 7000 a night in the top-end hotels of the town could be availed at less than Rs. 3500 presently.