No respite for Chandigarh development body, its hotels still stuck in red

The financial report is to be tabled in the CITCO board meeting scheduled for Thursday, The records of Mountview reveal that sales at its Rustle Restaurant dropped from Rs 1.23 crore to Rs 91.48 lakh. Sales figures of its banquet and bar also witnessed a steep fall. While sales at the banquet fell to Rs 6.14 crore this year, from the 7.33 crore last year, sales at the bar decreased from Rs 1.80 crore to Rs 1.65 crore.

At Shivalikview, sales of food and beverages have plunged considerably. Its Bazam Restaurant made only Rs 36 lakh this fiscal as compared to Rs 52.87 lakh last year. The bar at the hotel registered sales of Rs 1.24 crore this year, down from the Rs 1.36 crore the previous fiscal.

Both hotels are also grappling with low room occupancy. Occupancy at Mountview dropped from 36 per cent last year to 30.52 per cent this year. The hotel, the city’s first five star one, has 144 rooms and 10 suites with an average room revenue (ARR) of Rs 4302.

The room occupancy of Shivalikview also registered a decline from 64.67 per cent to 61.90 per cent. The hotel has 108 rooms with ARR of Rs 2830.

High salary to sale competent

As per norm, the salary to sale has to be between 20 and 22 per cent. In both hotels, however, it is more than double the norms. Salary to sale component of Mountview increased from 58 per cent last fiscal to 61 per cent, while in Shivalikview, it jumped from 48 per cent to 53 per cent.

There are around 1,000 employees working in different units of CITCO, while a workforce of around 600 has been hired on contract through service providers.

CITCO had recently suspended five employees deployed at Mountview for eating unauthorised food in restaurants.

Taking serious note of the incident, managing director Kavita Singh called a meeting of general managers of all hotels and aired footage allegedly showing indiscipline among staff and lack of supervision.

In the clips, staff members were allegedly seen eating food in restaurants, sitting at places meant for guests and having authorised food.

MD Kavita Singh said there are various components in sale and there has been improvements in some components. She further stated that sale figures of banquets remained low and termed is as one of the main reasons for fall in sales. “We will take corrective actions to improve the sales,” said Kavita Singh.