Manali hotels feel the pinch, occupancy drops to 50 pc

Dushyant Singh Pundir and Abhinav Vashisht

Mandi/Kullu, May 21

Irked over unavailability of taxis, tourists have started packing up their bags in Manali. Commercial vehicles remained off the road as the strike by auto-rickshaw, taxi or luxury bus unions entered Day 3.

The transport unions went on an indefinite strike on Tuesday against the order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

A hotelier said the hotel occupancy had reduced to nearly 50 per cent in the past three day. Before the strike was called, the occupancy was nearly 80 per cent, he said and added that they were forced to cancel advance bookings as the tourists were unable to move out of the town for sightseeing.

People associated with the tourism industry said the state government had failed to put up the concerns of the livelihood of locals before the NGT and timely intervention could have averted the situation.

Local MLA Govind Singh Thakur said he had urged the state government to represent the hardships borne by residents with the NGT. He said during the visit of the Chief Minister to Manali on May 15, he had appealed to the state government to approach the Supreme Court to protect the livelihood of the masses, however only after the agitation, the government had decided on May 19 to approach it to seek relief on the orders of the NGT.

If the strike continues for a few more days, it would ruin the tourism industry, said another hotelier.

Aamod Agarkar, a software engineer in Mumbai, said he along with his friends had come to see snow here for five days on Monday. On the first day, they wenr to the tourist spots, but since Tuesday, they had hardy moved out of the town and now they were planning to go back as it was of no use to stay on.

The district administration had directed the RTO, Manali, to increase the frequency of local buses for Solang Nullah, Kothi and other areas around Manali to facilitate the tourists.

In the past two days, nearly 335 vehicles had reached Marhi, a snow-point on the way to the Rohtang Pass. The road was opened to the tourist vehicles up to Marhi yesterday only, but it would take a few more days to open the Rohtang Pass for tourists. On the first day, the administration collected Rs 3,88,500 from 135 vehicles as the environmental compensation charges, sources said.

Online booking on anvil

Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Vinay Singh Thakur said efforts were on to develop an online booking system for visiting the Rothang Pass. He said once the software was in place, domestic and foreign tourists would be able to book the slots for going to the Rohtang Pass by paying online. Out of the 1,000 vehicles permitted daily as per the directions of the NGT, the administration had decided to allow 500 vehicles of Manali, 100 commercial vehicles from the rest of Himachal and 400 vehicles of tourists, including commercial vehicles from out of the state. The online booking facility would assist the tourists to pre-book their Rohtang expedition, to avoid undue hassle, the ADM added.