KARACHI, Dec 28: Room occupancy rates in the leading hotels of the city and other parts of the country has reached below the 20 per cent mark following the assassination of the PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, in an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday evening.

According to hoteliers, foreign missions of various countries have issued travel advisory notes (TAN) declaring the country and some of the cities highly unsafe asking their countrymen to restrict their movement in the wake of the deteriorating law and order situation in the country.

The chairman of the Pakistan Hotels Association (PHA), Muzaffar Baweja, told Dawn on Friday that most of the events (marriages, conferences, etc) had either been cancelled till Jan 1 or had been postponed.

A similar situation was witnessed following the twin blasts in the welcome procession of the late Benazir Bhutto on Oct 18, he said.

“There is 30:70 ratio of room occupancy in the leading hotels as foreigners’ share is 30 per cent while 70 per cent is shared by locals in the normal days”, said Mr Baweja. He said that currently less than five per cent foreigners and around 15 per cent locals were staying in the hotels.

The PHA chairman said that the movement of foreigners and even locals had been badly affected as many flights had either been cancelled or postponed. For the last eight months hotels have been witnessing average room occupancy rate. Now the situation is heading for the worst for the hotel industry after Thursday’s tragic incident.

He said that the situation might become clear in a day or two depending on the law and order situation. However, the room occupancy rate was likely to remain under pressure till Jan 2008 as much depended on the fate of the general election and political stability, he said.

“The hotel industry has pinned much hopes on the Expo Pakistan 2008 scheduled for March,” he said.

The member of the executive committee of the Travel Agents Association of Pakistan (TAAP), Yahya Polani, said that there was zero business on Friday as movement of both outgoing and incoming passengers had come to a halt due to the city situation coupled with cancellation and postponement of flights.

The general manager of a hotel in Saddar said that only 10-15 rooms were currently occupied out of the total 84 and other hotels in the area were facing almost a similar situation.

He said that people staying at hotels had already moved to railway stations and airport on late Thursday. He said that other local hotels in the vicinity of Saddar had hardly any foreigners.

“Foreigners, in normal days, usually hold 15-20 per cent share in the total room occupancy in small hotels”, he said.