Comments
New Year’s eve revelry will be muted this year, with organisers and party goers going slow on the celebrations following the recent heavy rains and floods that ravaged the city.
Quite a few hotels have cancelled their customary celebration.
While many of the hotels and pubs in Chennai, like Residency Towers, ITC Grand Chola and 10 Downing Street having called off the parties keeping in mind recent disaster, the few hotels that are holding special buffet dinner are seeing a muted demand this year.
Hotel Ramada, which is arranging a special buffet on December 31 costing ₹1,299, is seeing a steep decline in the sale of buffet tickets. According to a senior manager of the hotel so far none of the enquiries have translated to sales. “We are hoping to sell at least towards the end of this week.” The sombre mood prevailing since the flood has affected the restaurant’s business during Christmas as well. But it is picking up slowly. “Usually, restaurants are crowded on December 24 and 25. But this year, Christmas Eve was a slow day though we were houseful on Christmas night,” he said. Crowne Plaza, another hotel in Chennai that is arranging for New Year’s dinner, sells around 500 tickets every year, but this year the number of ticket sales stand at 50 per cent. The official in-charge of festival bookings, said they expect the tickets to be sold out by the end of the week.
While hotels in the city are planning a low-key gathering, few resorts along ECR and Mahabalipuram are going for full scale celebrations. Samuel T Rajan, Resort Manager, Grande Bay resort, said: “After Chennai floods, we want the Chennaites to have a good time for New Year and the party was arranged with that focus. So the party arrangements are no different compared to last year.”
But the sales have been slow with only 25 tickets, priced between ₹2,500 and ₹6,000 sold till date. “The sale has been slow, considering the recent calamity but we expect to sell around another 75 tickets in the coming week,” he said. However, there has been no impact on the occupancy rate and it is running full house like every year, though the decline has been from outside guests, he added.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.