Coronavirus Outbreak Affects Iran Hotel Industry

IRAN NEWS ECONOMIC DESK

TEHRAN – Iran’s tourism industry which counted on New Year (Nowruz) travels will suffer billions of tomans of loss over cancelations of travels and bookings of hotels.

Head of Iran Hotel Association Mr. Jamshid Hamzezadeh yesterday said that the outbreak of coronavirus has led to cancellation of hotel bookings for New Year holiday, and the move has caused billions of tomans of loss for hotels in the country.

He admitted that Iran’s tourism industry had counted great on New Year travels and bookings either for domestic or foreign tourists but the outbreak of the virus shattered all hopes and it inflicted great losses on the tourism industry.

He said most people who had booked rooms in hotels have cancelled and called for return of their money and hotel owners now are facing with headache.

He noted that the employment coefficient for occupation in hotels in the country fell to under 5 percent, admitting that some hotels have closed down and in some provinces like Ardebil, Gilan, Mazandaran and Qom hotels have been closed temporarily because of coronavirus.

He added that either authorities order for closure of hotels or hotel owners themselves close, there is no visitor and guest for hotels. He reiterated that this happened while hotels had considerable number of bookings for this New Year because devaluation of national currency had led to significant drop in demands for traveling abroad.

Hamzezadeh added that the number of bookings in hotels was more than 50 percent on average and Isfahan and Yazd Provinces as well as Kish Free Trade Zones had the most number of bookings.

He noted that currently about 2050 hotels and apartment hotels in the country are active and some 500 more hotels are under construction.

He said hotel owners both suffered losses in terms of renting rooms and reception halls, adding the loss from cancellations of all ceremonies in the halls is almost ten times more than cancellation of rooms.

Hamzezadeh noted that currently there is no exact figure about the amount of losses in hotel sector, adding that during last New Year flood disasters, cancellations of room bookings cost hotel owners 50b tomans of loss but this time since the period of virus outbreak is unknown it is expected the figure for the loss to be hundreds of billion tomans.

He reiterated that hotel owners in provinces like Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi, Fars and East Azarbaijan have suffered more comparing to other provinces because of cancellation of bookings for the New Year holidays.

He urged the government to support hotel owners by offering supportive packages like delay in repaying their loan installments.

Iranian celebrates Nowruz (New Year) which is the beginning of the spring and it will begin on March 20.