April 1, 2006	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 2, 1427

KARACHI, March 31: Leading hotels in the city are doing a roaring business these days because of ongoing Expo Pakistan that has pushed up the room occupancy to over 90 per cent.

All the hotels were booked much ahead of the five-day mega event which started from March 29 at the Karachi Expo Centre in which some 1,000 business people from 57 countries were participating.

Besides, a large number of foreign buyers have landed in Karachi and are busy in negotiations with Pakistani counterparts for their mutual benefit of expanding their business.

The hotels had been witnessing a sharp drop in the room occupancy from the last week of February as foreigners especially from the European countries had postponed their visits following violent demonstrations in many cities of the country and a bomb blast near American Embassy in Karachi ahead of Bush visit.

Hotel business relies heavily on the political and economic situation of the country and any act of terrorism or violence makes a direct impact on the hotel industry.

“The situation has now changed and the room occupancy is now touching over 90 per cent in Karachi,” Pakistan Hotels Association chairman Aziz Boolani told Dawn from Islamabad on Friday.

“I am very optimistic that the business situation will remain bullish because of positive economic indicators. This situation is definitely favourable for hotel business,” he added.

He said that the room occupancy had plunged for just only two days after the March 2 blast near the US Embassy in which four people including an American were killed.

For the last 18-20 months overall business of four and five star hotels had been termed quite satisfactory. However, he said that small hotels had been in trouble due to below average room occupancy because a lot of issues had been hitting their business.

He said that there had been no major investment arrived in the hotel industry after the $34 million investment for setting up Serena hotel in Islamabad in 2001.

“There is some more investment in hotel business in the pipeline in Islamabad and Lahore. However, there is no big investment in sight for setting up luxurious hotels in Karachi,” he said.

Mr Boolani said that tourists contribute only three per cent to the total earnings of four and five star hotels. He added that hotels mostly earn from the arrival of local and foreign businessmen, diplomatic meetings, NGOs gathering, exhibitions and fairs.