 | As tu3031 would say, 'Johnson, stop the presses!' |
karachi — Hotels in Karachi which have been enjoying good times for the past several years with occupancy rate touching 90 per cent, have started feeling the effects of the Islamabad blast as occupancy rate has declined to 30 per cent in recent days.
| Pshaw! That was all the way up in Islamabad. You don't have moose-limb crazies in Karachi, do ya? |
Since Saturday hotels in the city have witnessed an alarming drop in bookings from foreigners as well as Pakistani nationals and many occupants have checked out before their departure date fearing a Islamabad type attack by a suicide bomber.
| Looks like Harold and Maude are vacationing in Mauritania instead ... |
Although business is usually sluggish in the holy month of Ramadan as foreigners tend to avoid visiting Pakistan, ...
| ... good advice the whole year 'round ... |
... the deteriorating law and order situation in the country has also not helped the cause of the hotel business in Karachi.
A hotel industry official told Khaleej Times on Tuesday that after the Islamabad bomb blast, the city hotels have been incurring a combined loss of Rs7 million daily while all over the country the loss stood at around Rs30 million per day.
| We got some hedge-fund operators who might need a place to stay ... |
KarachiÂ’s three five-star hotels have admitted that they had been flooded with cancellation calls from overseas clients. They are also losing millions of rupees of business daily as private companies and individuals have cancelled Iftar and dinner parties, a major source of income in Ramadan. a sources in the hotel industry said.
Managements of the five-star hotels of the city feared the worst in the coming months for the hotel business unless the law and order situation all over the country and especially improved considerably. “If the present law and order situation persists and bomb blasts go unchecked it will be disastrous for the hotel industry and could lead to largescale retrenchements and loss of jobs,” he said.
| They'll go from five stars to one star, and that might not be low enough. |
Meanwhile, hotels in Karachi have adopted more stringent security measures by boosting the number of armed guards at its entrance gates besides restricting movement of cars into car parks. The city police have also placed more personnel around the hotels to provide security.
| The management in Islamabad thought they had increased security enough, too ... |
|