The Hindu : Business : Tourism, travel will be hit

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Saturday, Nov 29, 2008
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Business

Tourism, travel will be hit

Ramnath Subbu

‘In the mid-to-long-term, global business priorities will prevail’

— PHOTO: T. SINGARAVELOU

RELAXED: Le Cafe on the Beach Road in Puducherry.

MUMBAI: The terror attacks in the heart of Mumbai, the commercial capital of the country, may have seriously tested the city’s spirit of resilience but they will certainly impact sectors such as travel, tourism and hotels.

Anuj Puri, Chairman & Country Head, Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, a leading real estate consultancy, said, “In the short-term, there will definitely be a decline in cross-border business visits to the financial capital. However, the impact on the real estate market will not be pronounced, since this asset class has a long lead time. Moreover, nothing will change the fact that Mumbai is a key business location in the global context, and that it will continue to be a nexus for the biggest real estate transactions. “This incident, though very unfortunate, is a transient glitch in time for a city that has absorbed tremendous body blows in the past. In the mid-to-long-term, global business priorities will prevail.”

International rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) says that the tourism and hotel industry are expected to have the most impact in the near-term and foreign tourist inflows are likely to slow down. “Western countries have either issued travel advisories or cautions. Media has reported about 15 per cent cancellations in airline bookings at present. Overseas clients, such as those of Indian IT companies, may postpone their visits but this may not have much impact since business travel to outsourcing destinations is anyway low due to holidays in the Western world,” said the S&P statement.

In a statement, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has strongly condemned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and according to CII President and ICICI CEO, K. V. Kamath `` I have no doubt that business in Mumbai and in India will recover quickly from this challenge. However, the attack highlights the threat to the institutions of business that are an integral part of India’s growth and its relationship with the world. There is a need for heightened vigilance and consideration of measures that need to be taken to respond to such threats to our national security.”

Partha Chatterjee, Chief Marketing Officer of Berggruen Hotels, a five-star hotel chain, said “Hotels take the security of their guests very seriously and there are rigorous security arrangements at every five-star hotel in Mumbai and across the country. But if a person has such a serious intent of killing and shoots at hotel patrons indiscriminately, then there is little that the hotel security staff can do to prevent this type of assault. In view of these attacks, we will certainly have to rethink our arrangements to ensure that guests are not endangered in this way in the future.”

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