Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, March 29:

Oriental Hotels Ltd, popularly known as Radisson Hotel while celebrating its seventh anniversary has disclosed that it has reduced its losses by about 50 per cent in the fiscal year 2003-04 compared to the previous fiscal year. In 2002-03, the hotel had suffered a loss of Rs 118 million while in 2003-04, the losses have come down to over Rs 61 million. The hotel has had a total transaction of over Rs 250 million in its seventh year of operation in 2003-04 while it was only over Rs 176 million in the fiscal year 2002-03. However, in the first year of its operations, the hotel had a total transaction of over Rs 210 million, says the report. The total net cash loss of the hotel has been Rs 19.99 million in2003-04, which is much lower compared to previous years.

Radisson Hotel held its third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh anniversaries jointly yesterday as it had not been able to hold annual general meetings in these fiscal years due to a difficult environment, according to hotel officials. Accumulated investment of the hotel comes to over Rs 1.5 billion, taken as loans from banks including the investment of public and promoters.

Despite a difficult environment in tourism industry, the hotel has been paying bridge gap loans and interests to banks, which comes to over Rs 240 million of the total loans of over Rs 500 million taken from various banks, says B K Shrestha, managing director of the hotel while talking to The Himalayan Times. Bankers of the hotel are Nabil Bank, Rastriya Banijya Bank, Nepal Bank, Employees Provident Fund, Himalayan Bank, Nepal SBI Bank, Everest Bank, NCC Bank.