Manbeer Choudharys five-star hotel Noor Mahal in Haryana is almost sold out for weddings through March next year as people rush to venues that have more open spaces.
“It’s going to be a record season for the industry, far from being in the dump months ago,” said Choudhary, chairman of the Jewels Group of Hotels. “On one of the dates we have booked, we host 8-9 weddings. With 11 hectares of land, we have several wedding Venues and the capacity for outdoor weddings is 500 in the state, “he said. Choudhary is also president of the Haryana Hotel and Restaurant Association.
Hotels and resorts expect significant business and revenue spikes this quarter as the Indian wedding season begins. And they say it will be bigger and better than last year thanks to the expanded capacity limits, the easing of restrictions, and the improvement in vaccination rates.
Accor hotels in markets like Goa, Jaipur, Udaipur, Delhi and Hyderabad will be completely closed on all favorable dates until the end of this year, said Rohit Chopra, Regional Director Sales and Distribution Accor India and South Asia. “Compared to last year when there were restrictions on the number of people who could attend a wedding due to the pandemic, all major wedding markets are doing very well this year. People are slowly but surely warming up to the idea of going back to the old, big, fat wedding concepts while adhering to all protocols. ”
ITC Hotels is seeing a “definite” increase in wedding bookings for hotels such as the ITC Grand Bharat in Gurgaon, the ITC Grand Goa, the ITC Rajputana in Jaipur and the ITC Mughal in Agra.
Wyndham has seen an increase in bookings in Delhi, Gurgaon, Chennai, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Neemrana, Udaipur, Ajmer and Bengaluru. “Average daily rates continue to gain momentum and are broadly at the level of 2019. We have seen an increase in wedding and social events in all hotels and assume that this dynamic will continue through 2022,” said Nikhil Sharma, Regional Director, Eurasia, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.
Piyush Kapoor, general manager of the Radisson Blu Udaipur Palace Resort & Spa, said the hotel is even hosting weddings for overseas guests from the UK, Dubai and Saudi Arabia and could beat the usual pre-covid level of 65-70 weddings.
“We would have had about 10-12 weddings last year. With 245 keys, we have the largest inventory and have 8-10 venues. We’re doing pretty well and we’re back in business, ”he said. “The pace and confidence are good. Last year people were skeptical and there were a lot of restrictions.”
Tarun Thakral, COO of Le Meridien, said he expected sales to increase as the ceiling for wedding guests in Delhi was raised to 200. “At the current vaccination rates, we don’t expect any major changes in guidelines,” he said.
Choudhary said fear of psychosis seems to be disappearing, and potential guests are even asking about wedding dates in February in the hopes that the government will further ease the guest limit by then. Accor’s Chopra said there was also more involvement in various interventions during a wedding.
