I hate Sushi

All a headline is supposed to do is get you interested and reading. That's what this headline is all about. But I do really hate Sushi. Anything raw, covered with vestiges of rice and seaweed, encompassing a lump of raw fish doesn't make me go wow or salivating. Not at all… This is a personal choice. Sure, some people love it, and good for them and to each his own. My adventure with Sushi began many moons back at Hotel Hyatt Regency at Orlando Airport. I hated the damn thing, enough to reach out to the nearest dustbin and disgorge my mouth out. Clearly, Butter Chicken and Dal Makhani me is not made out for exotic delicacies. I came back to India; they let me in despite my tryst with Sushi; and I proceeded straightaway to savor my tikkis, samosas and pakodas, leading a guilt- and delicacy-free life.

Till June this year, when I remembered Sushi and Hyatt Regency again, when the hotel's Mumbai chapter announced it was shutting shop. Why? Because it was so cash-strapped that it didn't have the resources to pay salaries to its employees, a chain of events triggered by the novel Coronavirus and its still-omnipresent twisting tail (tale). One chapter in a hotel chain with over 600 properties worldwide went down in the space of a year of near-zero occupancy and financial chaos. The one saving grace has been that Hyatt Hotels has recently predicted a bounce-back and will open of some new properties in India, beginning with one in Jaipur.

Across the board, though, things are terrible for the hospitality space. Leave aside star hotels, smaller ones have been hit even worse, and I shall tell you why; that's another sad story.

More bad hotel news

I chose to disregard this particular bit of bad news, penning it off to ongoing times, bad reportage and worse rubbish. Till I saw some more, and then more still, this time closer home. LaLiT Hotels is reportedly said to be putting its property on the block, if one were to believe a recent report in a pink newspaper. As per a discussion document floated by Yes Securities which this paper claims to have accessed, the investment potential stake sale will deliver funds to Bharat Hotels for property renovation, besides closing the Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) gap with industry peers and adding to the company's bottomline.

Things, clearly, are going downhill, and at more than a trot. One little bird also told me that these investments will provide growth and acquisition opportunities through buy-outs / management contracts. But at what cost will this growth come? A dream created by Lalit Suri is in a spot of bother and we are pussyfooting around the real issues on the ground. Thus it was that I set out in my steady steed of a car to try and decrypt how bad things really are, at the ground level, across the country.

Unfortunately, what I have found is that things are even worse outside of large metropolises. One of the best private resorts in Himachal Pradesh that I have regularly stayed in, paying as much as Rs 7,000 per room night till two years back, is now letting out rooms through various booking websites for Rs 354 per room night, including all applicable taxes. Quite obviously, various layers of the hospitality pyramid are facing tumultuous times.

Idiots made it worse

Come June-July of 2021, a plethora of Indians made a mockery of the pandemic. Hotel rooms in Nainital, Mussoorie, Shimla, Dhanaulti, Mukteshwar and Manali were sold out and overflowing, as we witnessed crazy Youtube video aficionados wearing no masks, dancing in the streets in the evenings, obviously after enjoying the mornings and afternoons. Hoteliers too rejoiced for a bit and celebrated the renewed feeding frenzy. It couldn't last and it didn't, as COVID-19 had yet another laugh. It came back with newer strains and hotels again saw occupancies hit near-zero and all but downed shutters again.

With rising COVID-19 numbers, the picnicking idiots from our cities and towns panicked and ran to the safety of their homes, having unwittingly destroyed the little peace and good health that India's hills and mountain-tops had managed to hang on to. The locals in these mountains were listless and clueless, especially as the meager earnings they had managed to mop up were suddenly being spent on hospital treatments as the pandemic scarred the hills. The bitter truth of what India's large cities had been through hit the Himalayas hard.

Somehow, the authorities, just a few months after the deathly Second Wave of the pandemic, chose to disregard the scenario, creating a disaster of unforeseen proportions. No vaccination or Corona-negative reports were asked for and anyone with a bike, a car or a bus ticket landed up in the hills. It is a bitter irony that today, when things are far better from the pandemic perspective, all hill stations have made these reports mandatory – a classic case of locking the stable door long after the horse has bolted. And today, thanks to the idiots who threw caution to the winds and shunned masks and social distancing, positivity numbers are mounting, panic has set in and hotels are empty.

Victims of own greed

One of the better Editors in this country, one with a lot of wisdom and nuts of steel, explained why and I agree with him. To a great extent, hoteliers are now paying the price of their own greed of the yesteryears. I am talking about the years gone by, when a menial room service dinner inside a hotel room – one small bowl each of daal and butter chicken, some yoghurt and two rotis – would cost around Rs 5,000, often more than the cost of the room itself. A cup of coffee or tea would be around Rs 1,000, including taxes and other levies. With most hotel guests being business travelers, all they had to do was put down their initials on the bill at the time of check-out. The companies would foot the bill when it was eventually raised.

These were glorious times for hotels as earnings were large and steady, leading them also to recruit staff commensurate with these numbers and paying hefty salaries. Leave alone star hotels, this was the case with smaller establishments as well, as also roadside eateries and dhabas. I have personally borne the brunt of this –there is hardly any dhaba on India's highways that has not increased prices by two-to-three times over the last four-to-five years. The going was good while it lasted, but those times are long gone and the ruthless pinch (punch, if you will) is being felt now.

An added miscreant in the downfall is the abject state of the economy and the resultant reduced earnings and lost jobs for crores of hitherto well-off Indians, especially the middle-class which has had high aspirations and higher spending power over the last two decades, leading to the current crisis. In the new scheme of things, this target clientele pool has all but dried up, with the elastic bands around once-fat wallets hardly ever being unwound now.

So what comes next?

Not much in the way of relief, if you ask me, especially not anytime soon. Ashwini Kumar, the owner-manager of a quaint hotel in Mashobra, near Shimla, sums it up pretty succinctly – "Log bahut dar gaye hain (people are really scared)," he explains. Between the rising number of Coronavirus-positive patients and the repeated landslides that most of India's hilly regions have witnessed this monsoon season, people have panicked and rushed back home. And the stringent pandemic rules that have been put in place after these 'horses' have bolted is dissuading many others from travelling.

Ashwini and other hoteliers, including those at star properties, also highlight a new trend that they witnessed even as tourism and room occupancies surged for a bit after the Second Wave. "Most guests would get their food packed from smaller eateries outside the hotel and eat it in their rooms later, only to save on room service expenses. This not only depleted our earnings quite harshly, it also led to cutbacks in our cooking staff and raw material purchases. A cascading effect has also been felt in the local markets from where we procure our kitchen essentials and requirements."

The final blow has come from the work-from-home phenomenon and the increased dependence on and preference for group video and conferencing calls for the conduct of business. As large Corporates go digital and realize the cost benefits of doing so, travel is at a bare minimum. The impact is being felt by hotels, airlines, transportation and taxi companies and all of their staff. It is a vicious cycle, one that is pedaling along strongly, especially in these times of high fuel prices and dwindling incomes. Like I have already said, there is no respite in sight, certainly not anytime soon.

The writer is a communications consultant and a clinical analyst. narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal