City hotels experience five to 40 per cent shrinkage in revenue during the bandh yesterday.

Bandh heat dries up hotel revenue

City hotels experience five to 40 per cent shrinkage in revenue during the bandh yesterday.

Bharat bandh hit the corporate world in general, and the IT-BPO and hospitality sectors in particular, really hard. Experts pegging the estimated loss of revenue in Bangalore at Rs 1,000 crore.
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The saving grace for BPOs handling US processes was that yesterday being American Independence Day was a holiday anyway.

IT majors Infosys and Wipro, on the other hand, remained closed. TCS, anticipating the bandh, had booked hotel rooms for staff critical to the company's functioning on Sunday night.
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"As a precaution, we declared Monday an off day for our employees at the Bangalore campus. They will compensate for the loss of hours by working on Saturday," said Krish Gopalakrishnan, Infosys chief executive, in a statement.

Arun Venkatesha, the concierge of the Chancery Hotel on Lavelle Road, said, "Many reservations for the day were cancelled. We lost 20 to 25 per cent of our business due to the bandh."

A Taj Residency employee, who did not want to be named, said, "We are usually completely booked on Mondays.

However, yesterday, on account of the bandh, we lost about 10 per cent of our revenue. Several bookings from major software companies got cancelled because guests couldn't make it."

Rehan Rizvi, the concierge of Taj West End in Race Course Road said, "Several clients rescheduled because they couldn't make it. While we have lost about five per cent in revenues, we expect to recoup the loss in the days to come."

Mudasir Ali, the duty officer at The Monarch Hotel situated in Brigade Road, said, "Guests from Delhi and Mumbai changed their plans and stayed back because of the bandh. We lost around 40 per cent to cancellations and rescheduling of bookings yesterday."

'Who's Bharat bandh?'

Foreigners got confused, as expression 'Bharat bandh' becomes number one
Twitter trending topic in India yesterday.u00a0
'Bharat bandh' made it to the number one spot on Twitter trending topics yesterday after Tweeples from across the country took to the social micro blogging site to vent their frustration over the bandh. 'Who is Bharat Bandh?
Was he more famous than Ronaldo?' was among the many questions asked by confused foreigners on Twitter today. Hrish Thota (30) who goes by the name Dhempe on Twitter said, "I think it's interesting, India has a large number of users so obviously we use local lingo like bandh that's unfamiliar to foreigners."
He added, The Bandh has been a complete waste today. The government just won't listen; they only justify this price hike some other way."

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