Eating out? You will have to shell out more

NT CORRESPONDENT Bengaluru, Nov. 5

Hotels in Bengaluru are slated to hike the price of food items on their menus after Deepavali, according to the Bruhat Bengaluru Hotel Association. The Hoteliers attributed this to the steep hike in the prices of commercial LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), vegetables and edible oils and felt that the increase was necessary. PC Rao, vice-president, Karnataka State Hoteliers’ Association said, “While we really don’t want to hike the price of the menus and burden the customers, the essentials LPG, vegetables, cooking oil, have become costly now,” he said.

Though the fuel prices were reduced recently, the hoteliers say it won’t help them much. The price of a 19kg commercial cylinder was hiked from Rs 1794 to Rs 2064. A hotel needs at least three such cylinders daily. Further, the skyrocketing fuel price has pushed prices of commodities, including food grains, vegetable and cooking oil as well. “All hoteliers are forced to hike the price of food and beverages at least by 10% if not more. We’ll decide about it in a couple of days,” Rao added.

The outbreak of pandemic and subsequent lockdown has resulted in severe financial distress forcing around 30 to 40% of hotels to shut down business. There are reportedly around 18000 hotels in the city, including star hotels, bars and restaurants. While some hotels have already implemented the new rates, others will follow soon. Chandrashekar Hebbar, president of Karnataka State Hotel’s Association, said that after January, they hoped the situation would improve but after April everything got reversed. One of the staff of a hotel in Hosur Road said, “Earlier, we would be able to balance one price rise with another.

For instance, if onion prices were up and vegetable prices were lower, we would just reduce the amount of onions in dishes that require them for taste. Now, the prices of almost everything are up,” he said. The Hotel Association also urged the Central government to reduce the GST rate from 18 percent on commercial LPG to 5 percent. Hotels, on an average, have a profit margin of around 15%, but it’s been almost neutralised due to inflation, the association said. “The hike in LPG, electricity bills, building rental charges and managing employees’ salary is getting difficult to cope with.

The footfalls are however less since most of our customers are working from home. We do not want to burden the customers by increasing the food prices,” owner of a hotel in Shivajinagar said