Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation readies three-pronged strategy to revive its hotels

JAIPUR: Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) has chalked out a three-pronged strategy to revive its hotels, motels and midway facilities and make their operations profitable. Currently, more than half of the hotels remain closed due to unbaked strategies adopted in the past by different governments.
The three-layered plan involves RTDC itself running a few hotels which it thinks priceless, handing over some to operation and management (O&M) firms and leasing out others which cannot be revived by the corporation.
Speaking to TOI, RTDC chairman Dharmendra Rathore said, “We have already started working on the plan. In a month’s time, the whole strategy will be in place for execution.”
As per the plan, RTDC will run hotels like Jhumar Bawri in Ranthambore, Gokul in Nathdwara, Sarovar in Pushkar and Siliserh in Alwar.
“After deciding to run these hotels, we gave budgetary sanctions from the government for their renovation which has started in all these four hotels. Some of these hotels had never been renovated. The process will be completed before January 31,” said Rathore.
There are a group of hotels which RTDC thinks can survive the private competition, but the facilities need to be upgraded and also they are run by professionals.
Rathore said they will invest money in hotels like Teej and Gangour in Jaipur, Khadim in Ajmer, Jodhpur Ghoomer, Dholamaru in Bikaner, and Kajri in Udaipur and will see the feasibility of running them. But they would also consider bringing in an O&M firm to run it without displacing the existing RTDC staff.
But for the hotels which cannot be revived by RTDC because they need huge investments, the corporation will lease them out for less than 20 years without transferring the title. Rathore said that the government is against blind privatization.
“We, as a government, have a social responsibility. That’s why we cannot go for outright privatization. The model we are adopting is to revive the hotels, not give them to private people. The period we are considering should be enough for the private operator to recover his investments and it won’t be more than 20 years,” added Rathore.
It is expected that the whole exercise will be completed by RTDC in a month’s time. Rathore said the strategy will not take much time as they have already been working on it. “The list has been prepared. We will have a discussion to finalise which hotel to be in what category,” said Rathore.
But the most difficult part of the exercise has been getting title of the properties in RTDC’s name.
“Barring one or two hotels, RTDC did not have ownership titles almost all the properties. Some were in the names of tourism department, other in PHED, PWD and government of India. I brought a tehsildar on deputation to the corporation to focus on the work which was never under taken in RTDC’s history. Today, RTDC has title right of 50% of the hotels. The work will be completed soon,” said Rathore.