By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : The Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association (KHRA) Monday threatened an indefinite closure of the hotels in the state if their demands including declaring the hotel sector in Kerala as an industry and providing more tax benefits to it are not met.
"As the first round of protest, we will march to the Secretariat here tomorrow. We expect 5,000 of our members from across the state to take part," KHRA president K. Kuriakose told reporters here.
"But if our demands are not met, we will go for an indefinite closure of hotels and restaurants. On Tuesday, however, the hotels would remain open," he said.
KHRA is the biggest body in the money spinning tourism industry in the state. It is the only organisation for the hotel owners in Kerala.
"We have 80,000 members and we provide employment to nearly a million people and we are certainly a big force in the tourism industry. Despite our repeated demands to provide sops to this industry, the state government is silent," said G.Sudheesh Kumar, who owns a resort in Kovalam beach.
"This new government has imposed taxes by lowering the turnover limit of hotels. Today any hotel doing business of a million has to pay lot of taxes. This limit should be increased to Rs.2.50 million".
"Luxury tax today is charged at the rate of 15 percent, it has to be brought down to 7.50 percent. This area of business has to be declared as an industry, so that we get benefits which are applicable to industries," he said.