The average occupancy rates of the hotels in Colombo remained far below expectations during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), the Daily Mirror reports.
A number of star-class city hotels including Taj Samudra, Cinnamon Grand and several other relatively small hotels carried out expensive refurbishments targeting CHOGM 2013.
According to Colombo City Hotels Association Chairman M. Shanthi kumar, the expectation had been that a minimum of 4,000 city hotel rooms will be occupied. “I don’t want to comment on the reasons, but only 2000 to 2100 rooms were occupied during the event.”
“At the peak, from November 15th to 16th, the average occupancy rate was 55 percent. Average occupancy during 10th to 13th was at 30 percent and during 13th to 14th around 40 percent. This was far below our expectations,” he said.
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