The Himachal tourism industry is hoping for a revival after last year’s lull due to the lockdown and expects further losses this season as the second wave of Covid-19 infections spoils people’s escape plans.

Officials from the state-run Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) said occupancy at most of their hotels has dropped sharply in the past two weeks. “Our utilization is close to 40% on normal days and up to 70% on the weekends, but this weekend it has dropped to around 30%,” said Ashwani Soni, general manager of HPTDC. He added that they have suffered a loss of around around the last year £40 crore because of the pandemic.

The tourism industry’s contribution to the state’s economy is around 7%. The majority of weekend visitors to Himachal come from the neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Chandigarh. Tourists from Haryana and Chandigarh prefer hill stations like Kasuali and Chail over Shimla. But the restrictions imposed by the pandemic have resulted in fewer Punjab tourists visiting the hills.

“Himachal also sees large numbers of tourists from Gujarat and Maharashtra in March and April, but due to the recent increase in cases and travel restrictions, we have hardly received any visitors from these two states,” said Mohinder Seth. A Shimla-based hotelier and President of the Tourism Stakeholder Association.

Seth added: “The increasing flow of tourists during the winter months gave us hope, but now we are back on top.” He said the industry had received no help from the government and hoteliers were swaying under the burden of heavy bills such as water charges and property taxes. “If the government doesn’t help us in time, the industry will collapse,” said Seth.

Vijay Inder Karan, a Dharamshala-based hotelier, said the occupancy, which had hit 40-50% in December, had dropped below 10% again. “There are no advance bookings. We only get walkable tourists, ”said Karan.

After the high tourist season in December and mid-January, the Chaitra Navratri Festival draws a stream of local vacationers from West Bengal and Maharashtra to the mountain states in March and April. Foreigners start adventure tourism from mid-June with the opening of high mountain passes after the snowfall in winter.

In the 2020-2021 fiscal year, a total of 32, 13, 379 tourists visited the hills, including 31, 70, 714 residents and 42, 665 foreigners. In 2019-2020 the number was 1, 72, 12, 107, of which 1, 68, 29, 231 were domestic travelers and 3.82,876 were foreigners.

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