Peace Plaza, another hotel at Lakeside, too is adding 22 more rooms, increasing its capacity to 40 rooms. The hotel is investing Rs 25 million for the expansion. [break]
Hotel Butterfly, another popular lodging destination in the lake city, too is doubling its number of rooms to 40 and refurbishing older rooms.
Keeping Nepal Tourism Year (NTY) 2011 in consideration, hoteliers in Pokhara are in an expansion spree in recent months. They have pumped in millions of rupee to increase their capacity to cater more tourists in a better way during the year. They expect their investments to generate handsome returns too.
“We are making additional investment because we expect good business during NTY,” said Om Prakash Pandey, promoter of Landmark Hotel. “I don´t want to say ´we don´t have room´ to the visitors during the year-long tourism promotional campaign.”
Like Pandey, tourism entrepreneurs in Pokhara are optimistic of the city attracting huge number of tourists during the year. The government has set a target to bring in one million tourists during the year and the local entrepreneurs are working out various programs to attract half of them to Pokhara.
“This rosy prospect boosted my confidence for the new investment,” Pandey told myrepublica.com.
Tourism entrepreneurs had long shied away from investing in hotels and tourism services of the few years due to decade-long insurgency that hardly hit tourism industry in the country. But with the declaration of NTY 2011 campaign, they have geared up to expand their capacity to serve and also enhance the quality of their services.
Pandey said all the 39 new rooms will be luxurious. “Five of them would be suites and the rest will be deluxe rooms,” Pandey informed. He plans to charge $300 per night for the suites.
Bharat Parajuli, who has been operating Hotel Peace Plaza for the last 15 years, said that he plans to start operation of the new from October. “NTY has created environment for the expansion of the hotel,” he said.
Parajuli had started the hotel with initial investment of Rs 6 million. Now he is investing Rs 25 million for the expansion. “If political parties adhered to their promise of not organizing bandas and strikes, the investment will give returns immediately,” he added.
Likewise, Govinda Raj Pahari, promoter of Hotel Butterfly, said that he is renovating the existing rooms at his hotel after a gap of some three decades.
Entrepreneurs said they need to invest at least one million rupees to add just one well-furnished luxurious room. By the start of 2011, 300 new rooms will be added in the existing hotels.
“Entrepreneurs are investing at least Rs Rs 300 million for the expansion of existing hotels,” said Pahari, who is also the president of Western Regional Hotel Association.
At present, the lake city has tourist-class hotels.
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