NEWS | Tourist nos in Nainital, Mussoorie down by 50% after mandatory hotel bookings, strict Covid report checks
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Hoteliers said that often tourists arrive without prior bookings but now they were being turned away. A hotelier in Mussoorie said that on Friday and Saturday, a number of tourists were turned away by police for not carrying hotel booking slips
Tourist footfalls declined by as much as half in Mussoorie and Nainital this weekend as strict Covid-related checks kicked in. While hotel bookings were made mandatory last week to enter both hill stations, police teams also started thorough inspection of Covid- negative test reports.
Compared with the past few weekends when hotels in Mussoorie had recorded 100 percent occupancy, bookings nosedived to 40 percent to 50 percent this weekend. In Nainital, many top hotels had barely 20 percent occupancy on Sunday. Sandeep Sahni, president of Uttarakhand Hotels' Association, said that tourist footfall had declined drastically by half in hill stations.
“A number of factors have contributed to the decline in tourist rush. The administration has become very strict and there has also been some negative publicity after a video of a large number of tourists taking a dip at Kempty Falls went viral. Heavy rainfall over the past week has also caused people to change travel plans,” Sahni said.
Those associated with the tourism industry said that with the arrival of the monsoon, chances of tourism picking up in the next few weeks were slim.
