Hotels face desertion by employees Even as industry heads and entrepreneurs held parleys with Prime Minister G P Koirala and Maoist supremo Prachanda and his deputy Baburam Bhattarai in a bid to resolve the issue of intimidation by Maoists during the day, hotels across the city grappled with an altogether new crisis. According to confirmed sources, Maoists visited various hotels exhorting their staff to desist from work and join them for a rally against the agitating businessmen. The move was evidently aimed at putting the hotel management in the dock. The Hotel Association of Nepal had directed all hotels to give a seven-day notice to its guests to vacate the hotel as part of its agitation. “While we had given a week’s notice keeping in mind the convenience of tourists and the residing guests, this sudden move to quit work by employees at the behest of the Maoists is very irresponsible,” said Prakash Shreshtha, president of the Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN). He claimed most four and five star hotels in the city along with those in Nagarkot and Dhulikhel were forced to being run by a skeletal staff of the management. Meanwhile, most five star hotels in the city confirmed that Maoists had visited them in the morning asking the staff to leave work and join their agitation. “We allowed the willing staff to join the rally at Maiti Ghar. But most of them returned after that,” claimed a source at Soaltee Crowne Plaza. Hotel de l’ Annapurna maintained its work was ‘as usual’ during the day as employees refused to join the Maoists. “The Maoists stayed at the hotel for about half an hour asking us to quit work and the guests to check out. But when they left we continued with our daily schedule,” said an employee on conditions of anonymity. It was a similar case at Hyatt Regency where tension reigned for a while when Maoists began to pressurise employees. But when THT contacted the hotel in the evening, the hotel informed that things had returned to normal. However, the scene was not so peaceful at Hotel Everest where employees reportedly gathered outside the hotel protesting against the management. Most hotels faced a difficult situation on Wednesday even though some preferred to make light of the matter by maintaining that things were normal. But all of them confirmed they were besieged by phone calls from travel agents and tour operators inquiring whether the hotels had been forced to shut down. All this is confusion is bound to affect future bookings, feared some hoteliers.