New Delhi: Hotels in Rajasthan’s Jaipur on Monday accused Oyo Rooms of making fraudulent bookings. The online hotel booking company allegedly made these bookings to inflate its earnings, but this left the hotels in a bad state. This was so because these hotels are now facing tax recoveries, penalties and interest charges from the GST department. The amount the hotels are being asked to pay reportedly runs in crores.
These hotels are now forced to seek relief from the government departments. One of the hotels has even filed an FIR against Oyo company director Ritesh Agarwal at Adarsh Nagar police station in Jaipur. Hussain Khan, the President of Hotel Federation of Rajasthan, was quoted by a leading daily as saying that this was an unusual case, but is fast becoming a growing problem for the hotel industry. Meanwhile Sandeep Gogia, the convenor of the Hotel Federation of Rajasthan informed that around 100 hotels have received GST notices.
Apart from Jaipur, in Jodhpur also around 10 hotel operators have received GST notices in past 6 months. Investigations revealed that large scale frauds happened in first booking the hotel rooms and then cancelling. One of the hotels reportedly received a notice to pay Rs 1 crore. Hotels are booked online and then cancellation happens within minutes. A GST charge is levied for this which the hotels have to pay.
Cases of fake hotel bookings
Here are 2 cases of such fake hotel bookings. In the first instance hotel bookings worth Rs 22.51 crore were shown by Oyo Rooms in Samskara Resort. This led the GST department to demand payment of Rs 2.66 crore from the hotel. However the reality was that no such bookings ever take place at the said resort. Oyo Rooms showed bookings at this property in 2016, when the hotel did not even exist.
In another case, the GST department showed earnings of Rs 44 crore at the Kartikeya Hotel in 2023-24, but this was not the real earnings. This hotel has received a recovery notice of Rs 4 crore.
