Shillong gains from Darjeeling turmoil

Staff Correspondent

Shillong, June 12: The uneasy calm in Darjeeling has diverted many tourists from Bengal to Shillong as evident from the occupancy in hotels in the past few days. Although Shillong has its own share of visitors during this time of the year especially those who wanted to escape the heat, this time the flow indicated an upward trend, said people who are into tourism business.

“This could be due to the latest turmoil in Darjeeling that prompt the tourist to shift to Shillong”, stated a lady who is running a travel agency, adding, “I am doing better business than the usual days due to sudden escalation of visitors.”

Hoteliers also acknowledge the notion by illustrating the bookings that they had in the past few days. Most of the owners of the budgeted hotels in city and even in Sohra (Cherrapunjee) say that they are running out of rooms in the past week or so.

A family of tourist from Behrampur, West Bengal who spoke to this correspondent also said that their first option was Darjeeling but promptly changes their destition to Shillong after learning about incident in Darjeeling.  Another group of Tourist said that they could have chosen Sikkim but it’s the same stretch of road that connects Darjeeling and Gangtok so they don’t want to take any unnecessary risk and that is why they prefer Shillong.