Hardly any visitors, empty hotels, Kasauli tourism industry back to lockdown days

“In the last 18 years of my service here, it has been for the first time that such a havoc was created by the monsoon rains. Zero bookings, early check outs, no future bookings has left the hotel in great losses,” Atul Chandel, manager of hotel Majestic Cedar said.

Chandel said this is Kasauli’s tourists season and never in previous years so much of their businesses have been affected. “Being a small hill station, most of the businesses, small or big, comes from tourism that has been completely crumbled,” he added.

The recent scenario of tourism has reminded Sanjeev Kumar, manager of hotel The Chateau of the lockdown period. “It was last during lockdowns due to Covid-19 that our hotels were completely empty with zero bookings and tourist inflow. All the bookings of the hotel stand cancelled. It is on the business of these three months of May, June, July that the hotel industry survives the entire year. With zero income, it would be difficult to pay even the salaries of our staff,” Kumar added.

Meanwhile many shopkeepers of the Heritage Market have closed down their shops claiming that with no tourists and electricity for the past five days, running the shops was almost impossible. Aman Chopra, owner of Mom’s Kitchen said “There was no electricity and water supply for the past five days in the market. Also since no tourists coming in, many shops of the Heritage Market have been closed down.” He said when the administration opens the highways, rain follows, leading to another shut down, and in the process, the businesses comes to a complete halt.

Similar sentiments were shared by Pradyuman Jain, the owner of a cloth shop, who said that some people like him “come from home for few hours in the hope of getting some business”.

Gauram Mahajan, SDM, Kasauli said that the mountains are not very safe currently and hoped for better times ahead. “Post Covid, the tourism industry of this hill station flourished many times. We hope that post this catastrophe also the industry will certainly look up. The administration is making all efforts and we wish good luck to the tourism industry that soon things improve and it looks up again for the good,” the SDM added.