Some lodges shut, others hike rates; guests left high and dry
Times of India | 22 August 2026
Kolkata: As one budget hotel after another was served closure notices and forced to down shutters on Friday, tourists — a majority of them from Bangladesh — found themselves caught in a double jeopardy: asked to vacate rooms booked weeks in advance at short notice and then, left scrambling for alternative accommodation at sharply higher tariffs.
Several tourists said as they moved from one hotel to another on Marquis Street, Lindsay Street, Free School Street, Sudder Street and Collins Lane, they found rooms at many hotels still operating were being offered at one-and-a-half to twice their usual rates. Rehena Rahman and her sister Shamima Akhtar, a cancer patient, found themselves on the street on Friday after the hotel they had checked in at Hotel Arfaan International the previous day, was shut without notice.
The sisters, residents of Uttara in Dhaka, had come for Shamima’s treatment and follow-up at Tata Medical Centre. “We came to Kolkata on Thursday and got a mammogram done at the Tata Medical Centre. The report will come on Tuesday. After the follow-up, we are supposed to return home on Wednesday. We had not anticipated this situation,” said Rehena, standing with their luggage outside the shut hotel.
The sisters said they would usually stay at Hotel Arfaan during their visits since 2020 as it was affordable. “The hotel rooms are clean, the staff friendly and the tariff, only Rs 1,000 a night. That is why we stayed in Arfaan,” Rehena said. “Now there is a crisis. Where will we go?” Rehena said. “We are looking for a hotel but not getting one.”
Another businessman, Sheikh Saidul Islam Raju from Jessore in Bangladesh, said he was shopping at New Market on Friday when he received a call from the hotel, asking him to vacate as it was being shut. “I found my suitcase at the reception. The hotel staff asked me to look for another place. I was paying Rs 900 for the room at Arfaan. The other hotels are now charging Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500,” he said.
Khurshid Alam Joy was similarly left in a bind while travelling with his wife Nusrat and their daughter Muskaan for the five-year-old child’s follow-up treatment after an open-heart surgery last year. “We booked a room at Hotel Duke but when we reached Kolkata, we found the hotel closed. A number of other hotels on the same premises were also shut. I was looking for a budget hotel within Rs 1,000 a night but could not find one in the Marquis Street area on Friday. I am now planning to head to Mukundapur for a cheaper option,” said Joy.
Calcutta Hotel & Restaurant Owners’ Association president Rajesh Sethi said the administration ought to have given the hotels some time till guests could find alternative accommodation. “This is harassment for guests from across the border. They have to look for other hotels and don’t know whether even those will be closed down in a couple of days,” he said, highlighting the plight of Bangladeshi boarders.