Next time you visit a 5 Star or 4 Star hotel and do not find a liquor bar there, don’t be surprised. As per the Tourism Ministry’s new guidelines, it will not be mandatory for 5 Star or 4 Star hotels to have a liquor bar on the premises to get the “Star” tag.
The Tourism Ministry will just scrutinise the level of facilities and amenities to assign them Stars. Till now alcohol service was essential for hotels seeking classification under the categories of 5 Star, 5 Star Deluxe, 4 Star, Classic Heritage and Grand Heritage.
“Considering the long-standing demand of the hotel industry, the Ministry has taken the progressive step of classifying 4 Star, 5 Star hotels in non-heritage sector and classic category hotels in heritage sector without insisting on the presence of a bar that serves alcohol on the premises,” said Tourism Minister Shripad Naik on Friday.
According to the new guidelines, hotels in the categories of 5 Star and 4 Star in non-heritage sector and classic category hotels in heritage sector can now be classified as “5 Star with alcohol service”, “5 Star without alcohol service”, “4 Star with alcohol service”, “4 Star without alcohol service”, “Classic Heritage with alcohol service” and “Classic Heritage without alcohol service”.
“This decision would provide flexibility to hotel owners and management to take considered decision on whether to provide alcohol service or not in their units,” a senior official said.
This is yet another relief for the hotel industry. On Thursday, the Tourism Minister had announced simplification of classification process for hotels by cutting the number of mandatory approvals from 17-18 to two. The Ministry will only seek ‘trade’ and ‘bar’ (where applicable) license from the hotel owner. Instead of numerous approvals, a hotel owner must now produce an affidavit with an undertaking that the approvals have been taken from the respective authorities.
Earlier, the Ministry used to seek certificates of clearances from the Environment Ministry, police, pollution board, fire services and airport, among others.To protect the interest of customers, the official added, all classified hotels have been asked to mandatorily make their precise classification status known on the opening page of their website and also declare the status clearly on their promotional and marketing material without any abbreviations.
The classification of hotels in Star and heritage categories is a voluntary scheme wherein classification is granted based on inspections undertaken by a committee comprising of representatives of hospitality/travel trade, Tourism Ministry, State Government and hospitality experts. The key objective of the classification is to certify minimum acceptable standards of services and infrastructure of the hotel, based on globally acceptable best practices. The classification process has been one of the very prestigious and acceptable certification of services in the hospitality sector, the official added.
