SHILLONG, Nov 27: The tourism industry in Meghalaya has taken a beating every year since 2018 due to violence, resultant curfews and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some hoteliers in the city said the occupancy rate of their hotels went down by 70% after the sporadic incidents induced by the killing of five Meghalaya villagers by the Assam police and forest personnel at Mukroh on November 22. “The sudden drop in the occupancy rate from 100% is hurting us,” a hotelier told The Shillong Times, declining to be quoted.
Some hotels were lucky to be occupied by businesspersons and tourists who had planned their programmes months before and continued to stay during the unrest.
About 2,500 doctors who came to Shillong to attend a conference at NEIGRIHMS also kept some hotels running.
After a peaceful three-year phase, trouble in Shillong started with the Harijan Colony issue in 2018. The law-and-order situation went for a toss for almost a month, robbing the city of visitors who planned to escape a searing summer in the plains of Assam and beyond.
The following year was marked by protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Meghalaya and elsewhere in the Northeast. The impact of the Ichamati violence during that period made many tourists leave Shillong.
COVID-19 then broke the back of the tourism industry in 2020.
The situation improved for some time in 2021 but Shillong once again witnessed violence over the killing of former HNLC leader Cheristerfield Thangkhiew. Apart from affecting the lives of the common people, the chain of events dented the state’s image enough to keep tourists away.
Shillong has more than 150 big and small hotels besides homestays.
