Wedding venues can’t keep up with rising requests

Business India Pandemic

Many couples had to postpone their weddings due to the third wave, as venues  are filling up quickly.

Wedding venues in the city are full to capacity right now. There was an increase in demand as people rushed to get married after their weddings were postponed in the Covid lockdowns.

Srinivasan, front office executive at Radisson Blu Hotel, said they have received a lot of requests for a date in February, particularly between February 14 and February 28, as many of them had to postpone their marriages scheduled in  January.

A spokesperson from Leela Palace said that they have experienced a surge of requests for bookings for the months of February and March. They had a high number of cancellations in January and had to postpone.

A spokesperson from the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) said that they got a similar response last year too. He added that it is not good for the industry because they had to give refunds to the people who cancelled due to the rising Covid cases. They are now seeing a 50 per cent increase in requests for hotel rooms, catering services, and wedding venues for   later dates. But the hotels and venues are not able to accommodate everyone as there are only limited -spaces for all the services.

“We also saw a decrease in business due to lockdown periods, but businesses are now used to covid and are offering flexible days to postpone the services and attract customers,” he added.

Umesh, who planned to marry on January 14, had to postpone the wedding to February. However, the officials at the venue he booked told him that as many people had postponed to February and March, they could not give him a date until April-May. 

Mounika, who planned her wedding on February 11th, said, “I am glad that the number of cases has dropped, but I am unsure whether to postpone the wedding amid the third wave of Covid. If I had to postpone my wedding further, there would be no venues for some months.”

Dr. R. Rajesh, professor at the Department of Sociology at Bangalore University, said, “The eagerness to get married due to Covid is at its highest as many of them postponed their marriages from the year 2020 to 2022. They want the functions to be mask-free. Some functions were also postponed as people lost their family members to the pandemic.”

He added that all these things led to the increase in bookings and the third wave also hit the marriage season. This is not always good for the industry as it is still getting back on track and people are cancelling and asking for full refunds.

Based on the report by wedmegood  more than 30 percent of the vendors business got affected. The most impacted businesses were that of wedding planners and decorators and the least affected businesses were that of wedding photographers and makeup artists. Around 38 percent of vendors said that they did not change their pricing while 11 percent vendors said they charge higher for their services now. Vendors like wedding venues, wedding planners, decorators and photographers responded that they charged lesser for less than 100 people weddings. Regarding the invitations, 32 per cent of users sent out only e-invites for their wedding and 59 percent of users sent out both traditional and e-invites. However, users who resorted to sending traditional invites were only nine percent.

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