MUMBAI: The hospitality and restaurant industry has been reeling under coronavirus-induced lockdown in the country.
Many hotel owners have decided to shut down or suspend operations till the health crisis sees an end.
Milind Samel, who owns the hotel, Yellow Chilli, at Dadar along with celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor, said that things are bad for the hotel industry.
“In one word, there is doom,” said Samel describing the crisis in hospitality industry.
He added that the hotel has been closed for the past three months. “Now, they want to reopen for the parcel service but there are no adequate staffers since they've returned to their native places in Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
"We had decided to restart the hotel with the available staff but on last Tuesday, one of our staff members got infected with the virus. The government really needs to step in and help us,” Samel who pays over Rs 4 lakh monthly rent said.
There is no income but there's a lot of expenses arising from maintenance, salaries to employees, electricity bill etc.
Sagar Hugale, another hotel owner said that they have rented the hotel premises but the person who runs the hotel has not paid the rent for the last three months.
“We get over Rs 5 lakh as rent for our hotel but after the outbreak of COVID-19, the person who runs our hotel shown is unable to pay rent.
We are confused, if he has not earned anything, how we can ask him to pay the rent. It is morally wrong."
What caught him by surprise was the hefty electricity bill of Rs 1 lakh, even though the hotel was shut.
He said that the government has not uttered a single word of helping their industry. “Last three months, the hotels were closed down and there is no response to parcel services as well. If things continue like this, how we can survive and there is no guarantee of this health crisis getting over soon,” Hugale pointed out.