With a view to taking stock of the various arrangements related to the augmentation of hotel accommodation coming up for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2010, a high level meeting of the Task Force was held with minister of tourism Ms Selja in the chair on April 12.
All the land owning agencies - Delhi Development (DDA), Government of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh -- and other stakeholders like MCD, NDMC and ministry of urban development attended the meeting.
The tourism minister reviewed all the new hotel projects coming up for the CWG 2010 along with the licensed guest houses, bed & breakfast establishments, DDA housing flats located at Vasant Kunj which would be operated by the Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC).
The review of the Task Force indicated 8227 rooms have been completed, which account for 75 per cent of the overall 10,981 "definite" rooms. "The performance of hotel projects in respect of Haryana was found to be noteworthy as nearly 80 per cent of the definite rooms have already been completed," Ms Selja said. It is also estimated that around 11,028 rooms would be available from the licensed guest houses.
Further she stressed on the need to ensure the timely completion of the balance definite rooms by DDA, Haryana, and other land owning agencies and desired that all efforts may be made to complete the maximum of "likely" rooms into a "definite" category.
As regards the bed & breakfast establishments, it was informed during the meeting that presently there are a total of 1903 rooms in the NCR of Delhi (1163 rooms in Delhi and 740 rooms in Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad).
The minister also directed that the list of all bed & breakfast establishment should be updated on the official website of the Games Travel Office for wider publicity. "The issue of clearances was critical for the hotels, as the benefits announced by the government of the 5-year Tax Holiday would be available to 2, 3 and 4 star category hotels under sections 80-ID of the Income Tax Act, only if they started operation by July 31, 2010," she added.
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