NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 10: Foreign tourists planning to visit India after February 15 might not get a room in luxury hotels like Maurya, Oberois, The Park, the Taj Group of Hotels and Intercontinental. They might even have to settle for sarkari standards of hospitality. That's if they consider the ITDC hotels to be luxury ones.This situation may arise as both the hoteliers and tour operators are unrelenting on their set of demands. And the deadline is February 15.The fight is essentially over modes of payment. Hoteliers accuse tour operators of delaying bill settlements, bringing in lesser tourists than promised under the voucher scheme and paying the lower foreign exchange rate while charging a higher telegraphic transfer (or TT) from tourists. The tour operators, in return, are accusing hoteliers of blackmail.Hoteliers with the Hotel Association of Indai (HAI) are asking tour operators to pay them at the TT rate, to submit vouchers 30 days before the guest checks in and to make all prior payments or else they would not extend the 30-day credit norm.On Thursday, tour operators held a press conference to protest against the HAI `code of practice' and decided to boycott HAI hotels if their demands were not met. They also categorically said they would not pay the TT rate to hoteliers and that tariffs must be charged in Indian rupees only.``These hotels are running into heavy losses and want to cover it up by charging us the higher TT rate,'' says Subash Goyal, Indian Association of Tour Operators president.Hoteliers, on the other hand, say tour operators were notified about having to make payments in the TT rate an year ago and would have to give arrears for the period concerned before February 29.The voucher, according to hoteliers, has lost its sanctity and operators cancel bookings on just a few days' notice when the notice period is 30 days. ``There is a 25 per cent wash-out of rooms blocked through vouchers,'' says R K Puri, HAI secretary general. This amounts to a Rs 100 crore loss each year because these rooms (which finally don't get occupied) can't be let out to others even during peak periods.What's worse, hoteliers claim that close to Rs 70 crore of outstanding payments are lying with tour operators. But the tour operators are mainly grumbling over having to pay at the TT rate - which they claim works out to be Re 1 higher than the cash rate. Hoteliers contest this, saying the difference is only of 40 paise when compared with the traveller's cheque rate and 80 paise in comparison with the cash rate. According to Goyal, many operators will have to pay arrears as high as Rs 10 lakh (in lieu of the TT rate) if they abide by the new set of rules. Hoteliers say they will waive the arrears of all operators who agree to adopt the new code. Around a dozen tour operators have already agreed, claims K K Malhotra, president of ITC Hotels.
