New Delhi, Sept. 8 -- Luxury hotels in Delhi are seeing a sharp room crunch and a steep rise in tariffs ahead of the BRICS Summit, with several marquee properties showing no availability around the September 12-13 event or quoting rates running into six figures per night.

A check of hotel booking platforms showed no availability on September 11-12 at Taj Mahal and The Oberoi in New Delhi, while no rooms were available at Taj Palace in the city for September

10-12. The Leela Palace, New Delhi, was not accepting bookings for September 10-12.

Rooms available for September 10-13 at properties such as the ITC Maurya, New Delhi, were commanding exceptionally high tariffs, with the starting price for night accommodation running into over Rs 2.3 lakh.

K B Kachru, President, Hotel Association of India (HAI) and Chairman - South Asia, Radisson Hotel Group, told PTI, "India is commanding global attention at a defining moment - as the nation prepares to host marquee international events and cements its position as a premier MICE destination, the world is watching how we scale to meet our tourism targets.

"The BRICS Summit alone will put considerable focus on room inventory and that spotlight is exposing a hard truth: our hospitality infrastructure has not kept pace with our tourism ambition," he added.

Kachru highlighted that India currently has only about 200,000-220,000 branded hotel rooms, and for a country of our size and aspiration, that is starkly inadequate.

The two-day geopolitical event is effectively compressing demand across several days, as delegates and other visitors arrive ahead of the Summit and extend their stays, putting additional pressure on room inventory in central Delhi.

This could leave tourists, business travellers and families with pre-planned trips to the national capital facing substantially higher accommodation costs, forcing them to either pay a premium

for marquee properties, look for hotels farther from central Delhi, alter their travel dates or opt for lower-priced accommodation.

The BRICS Summit comes at a time when Indian hotels are looking to events-led travel and domestic demand to offset a challenging period for international travel amid geopolitical tensions, including the West Asia conflict.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.