The hospitality sector is slowly gaining momentum with the gradual restoration of train services, improvement in the Covid situation and revival of trade and commerce.

Several hotels of Dhanbad which were lying closed or had temporarily suspended the room service have re-launched their operations recently.

The hotel operators however, are demanding permission for the opening of banquet halls and resumption of dining services in their restaurants since active Covid cases have dropped to double digit figures in the district.

Skylark Hotel, one of the oldest three star hotels of Dhanbad, which opened up after a brief closure of around 20 days on June 11 is receiving around five bookings per day out of its 37 rooms.

Sonotel Hotel which had also closed bookings for a brief period has re-launched the service since last week and presently seeing 50 to 60 per cent occupancy.

The occupancy in another prominent hotel of the district, 17 Degrees, has also increased to five to seven rooms from two to three rooms about a week ago.

Talking to The Telegraph Online on Thursday, Senior General Manager of Skylark Hotel, Anutosh Bagchi said, “We have opened up the hotel from June 11 on the request of our corporate guests which are our main customer base.”

“During the week days from Monday to Friday the occupancy is around 7 rooms but during the weekend lockdown the occupancy falls to zero and thus the average occupancy is around five rooms,” said Bagchi.

“The main business of hotels depends on banquets and restaurants and since there is restriction on these, we are still incurring losses and once these facilities are allowed we will be in position to earn some profit,” said Bagchi.

Arka Ghosh, General Manager of Sonotel Hotel said, “Though there is some improvement in terms of room occupancy as during the weekdays we get almost 60 per cent occupancy of 56 rooms which falls down to 50% during weekends due to lockdown but our major concern is unoperational banquet halls.”

“Since majority of banquet bookings for July have been carried out for marriages in anticipation of improvement of situation during July but with restriction continuing we will soon have pressure for refund of booking amount also,” said Ghosh.

Sandeep Narang, proprietor of 17 Degree Hotel of Dhanbad said,“We can’t understand the reason for the continuation of restrictions on in-house dining service at restaurants and at least the dining should be restored with half of seating capacity.”

“Look at the market places and there is so much rush everywhere then what is the logic of continuation or dining service in restaurants which can be properly operated as per the Covid protocols,” said Narang.