Tourists yet to warm up to Commonwealth Games

About a month after it was thrown open for bookings, the Games Travel Office (GTO) of the Commonwealth Games does not seem to be generating much response from tourists.

"There hasn't been much booking at GTO as one would have expected. One of the reasons is the high tariffs being charged by the hotels," Tourism Secretary Sujit Banerjee said.

The official manager of GTO is travel company Le Passage to India. GTO functionaries did not disclose the number of bookings done so far. "Bookings have started coming in, but will pick up only when the teams are decided because we are expecting a lot of friends, family and relatives of the sports persons to accompany them," said Le Passage to India Managing Director Arjun Sharma.

The tourism ministry had estimated that over a hundred thousand tourists would visit Delhi during the Commonwealth Games.

Thus, hotels were asked to keep certain number of rooms exclusively for GTO. According to industry sources, the ministry may now be considering some reduction in that requirement and release some of the inventory to the hotels for their use.

"Hotels were made to commit to a certain level of tariff by the government. If bookings are not coming, then we just have to wait and hope that people will book in the last minute. Till now, we haven't seen much enthusiasm from tourists," said Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Association of India President Rajinder Kumar.

While GTO is still hopeful that bookings will pick up from September, several travel agents said they are not surprised at the tepid response.

"The Commonwealth Games should have been marketed well in advance and more agencies should have been involved," said an executive of a Delhi-based travel agency.

The tourism ministry had invited bids from travel companies to take charge of GTO, which was won by Le Passage to India. Subsequently, some travel agents had lobbied the government to let others also in because one agent cannot have a network in all countries.