New players in the hotel industry have opened up a range of options for the city's guests.

Sample these: A 24-hour coffee shop, a rooftop swimming pool and a 16-course banquet. All these were not on offer till the recent past. But thanks to the new players, such things are now available. Also, the newcomers are giving good competition to established players who now have now have competition when attracting guests.

The Panache and Gargee Grand are the newest entrants to the city's hotel industry while Hotel Maurya and Hotel Chanakya are the old players.

New players

Inaugurated in February, The Panache, with 70 rooms, boasts of 89 per cent occupancy.

'Corporate guests and foreign tourists constitute majority of our clientele,' hotel manager Sanjay Francis said. The hotel offers rooms in the range of Rs 7000 to Rs 19,000 per day.

Giving reasons for the kind of response the hotel was generating despite being a new entrant, the manager said its 24-hour coffee shop, available at no other hotel in the city, a 16-course midnight dinner which one can avail till 3am and its discotheque were attracting customers.

The hotel plans to add more facilities, like a gymnasium and a special tour package to tourist destinations like Rajgir and Bodhgaya for the guests.

Gargee Grand, another new player in the hotel sector, is now three years old and claims to have carved a niche for itself by drawing customers from old players (Maurya and Chanakya).

'Before we stepped in, there were just Maurya and Chanakya in Patna. In our three years here, we have been able to crack their monopoly. We are offering new things to the guests. One new thing we have introduced is, our guests can sit in one of our restaurants and see the chefs cook live. Then, we are the first hotel to start Thai and oriental cuisine in Patna. Our restaurant, 'Galangal', is the first to serve authentic Thai food in the city. Then again, we are the first to have a rooftop swimming pool, something Patna had never seen before. There is also an open barbeque by the pool side, helping us widen our client base,' Bipin Jha, corporate general manager of the hotel, told The Telegraph.

The hotel has 32 rooms. Its tariff starts from Rs 4,000 and goes up to Rs 15, 000.

 

Old is gold

Competition notwithstanding, the old players claim arrival of new players has not hit their clientele.

'Goodwill and trust are the key elements in the hospitality sector. We enjoy this advantage, irrespective of the new things being offered by the new players. There is hardly any competition when it comes to corporate or non-corporate clients. At least we are not feeling any competition,' Hotel Maurya general manager B.D. Singh said.

The hotel is one of the oldest players in the hospitality sector of the city and was established in 1977.

Those managing Hotel Chanakya, another old guard of the city's hospitality sector, echoed something similar.

'Old is always trusted. We have been in Patna since 1981 and our occupancy rate hovers in the range of 85 to 90 per cent, irrespective of competition,' Chanakya senior general manager T.K. Sinha said, adding: 'Things like good quality food, a very high standard of service and specialty in some dishes are the pull factors when it comes to retaining the old client base and adding new ones.'

Chanakya has a total of 112 rooms and tariffs range from Rs 6,200 to Rs 18,000.

 

Guestspeak

Citizens and guests were of the view that the new things do attract but maintained that the new hotels have to a lot of hard work if they want to break the dominance of old players.

'I travel to Patna regularly from Ranchi and have often put up at Hotel Maurya as our company is a corporate client of theirs. However, The Panache attracts me and the idea of a 24-hour coffee shop is definitely a novelty in Patna. Though I have not checked out the rooms yet, I would definitely want to live there. Also, the idea of a weekend wee-hour banquet is great. Next time, I will convince my company to book my room The Panache and try it,' said Avitendra Kumar, who works with a private firm in Ranchi.

Adrish Banerjee, another businessman based in Jamshedpur, comes to Patna often.

He had a different view. 'I would definitely want to dine and live at The Panache or The Gargee Grand. But I have been a long time guest of Hotel Chanakya. The new hotels might have a lot of novel things, but goodwill and trust matter a lot. They (Chanakya) know me very well and take good care of me. I will always think twice before checking into the new hotels. They will have to work very hard to win my trust. They certainly have a long way to go,' he said.