The DDA’s policy involves increasing the floor area ratio (FAR) in existing hotels. Once cleared, it will allow hotels to add more rooms to existing properties.

The Commonwealth Games is expected to draw around 0.8 million international tourists and nearly 3.6 million domestic tourists, and, from all accounts, NCR does not have enough hotel rooms.

The current FAR for hotels is 150, which the DDA has proposed to increase to 200. This was a long-standing demand of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI). “We had actually requested that the FAR of existing hotels be increased from 150 to 350,” an FHRAI member said.

“Auctions of plots for our budget hotels have not been as successful as we had hoped, which is why this policy has been formulated,” a senior official from the DDA’s planning department said.

Once sanctioned by DDA Vice-Chairman Dinesh Rai, the policy will be forwarded to the Union Urban Development Ministry for approval.

According to the Frank Knight report of 2007 on hotels, the National Capital Region at present has 9,982 hotel rooms. Of these, 85 per cent are premium-category hotels.

Unitech, Omaxe, Novotel, Leela, Lemon Tree, Indian Hotels Company limited (IHCL), Hillwod with Hyatt, Emaar with Accor and DLF with Hilton, Starwood Hotels and Roots Corporation are the main players who have planned huge investments in the hospitality sector here.

Research, however, indicates though many hotels are coming up, the Capital region is unlikely to meet the accommodation requirement for the Commonwealth Games. Keeping in mind estimates of tourist inflow, the demand for rooms has been pegged at 30,000 in 2010. Going by present plans, some 17,500 hotel rooms are expected to come up by then.

Auctions come a cropper

The DDA’s grand plans of auctioning plots for budget hotels has, meanwhile, come a cropper: the Authority has managed to auction only 15 plots. This, when it had plans to develop 22 (and an additional 13) budget hotels in Delhi. Gurgaon was to get another 25 hotels.

“There were several problems with DDA’s hotel auctions,” a senior member of the FHRAI, who did not want to go on record, said. “Location was the biggest issue. Proximity to the Games Village is not the only factor - we need to run the hotels later, too. Even if they were supposed to be budget hotels, no hotelier would want plots being offered there.

“I saw a DDA plot in Mandawali; I would never want to build a hotel there. And considering the location, their cost was also extremely steep.”