Omicron blow to Mysuru tourism

Shilpa P. | NT

Mysuru: Tourism to Mysuru received another blow after the state reported its first Omicron case. It was unfortunate timing for the city’s bustling tourism industry, which peaks in the latter half of December. Visitors to the Mysuru Palace declined, while others cancelled online hotel bookings. While demand did pick up slightly over Christmas, New Year sales haven’t been up to par, especially with a fresh bout of Covid- 19 guidelines that includes a night curfew.

Visitors to Mysuru Palace dropped by 60 percent between December 25 and December 31 2021, when compared with footfalls in the same period in 2019. Bringing some measure of relief is an improvement in the number of walkins at Mysuru hotels with guests spending NYE in their rooms. Still, the hotel occupancy was 20 percent less than usual, hoteliers said.

C. Narayangowda, head of the Mysuru Hotel Owners’ Association, said that after two waves of Covid-19, the “occupancy of hotel rooms which had picked up by Dasara season this year, dropped by 50 percent after the first Omicron case was reported in the state. A total of 63,788 visitors came to Mysuru Palace between December 25, 2021 and 31 December, 2021. It is a significant drop from pre-2020 numbers – in 2019, there were 161351 visitors to Mysuru Palace during the same week.

“Our hotel rooms were fully occupied from December 24 to January 2. This NYE, we had 80 to 90 percent occupancy in normal hotels, and 100 percent occupancy only in a few star hotels. Rooms used to be booked in advance, but now most of our business came from walk-in tourists. We also saw only half the number of tourists coming in from states like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu,” says Narayangowda. “A good number, around 20 percent of our tourists came from Kerala but that has reduced to five percent this year. Since the celebrations in the hotels were cancelled due to Covid-19 guidelines, people celebrated New Year in their hotel rooms,” he said.