Jamshedpur, Oct. 7: Even if the state government tourism website is updated, problems still exist in reservation of hotels online.

The new tourism website has everything, except the hotel reservation facilities for which the department is trying hard. The major problem in this regard has been the lack of connectivity with hotels in the state. Either they don’t have their own website or do not prefer to go online for reservations. This is a problem more for the tourists outside Jharkhand, where online booking is the common trend.

Moreover, the website is still waiting to get the final nod from tourism minister Hari Narayan Rai and is now running on a trial basis. However, experts think that attractive tourism packages but unavailability of hotel reservations in the package might result in a loss of tourists.

“The major problem has been that most of the hotels do not have their own websites. Usually there was an integration of both the websites along with a payment gateway that receives the payment through the debit cards and credit cards. We are in process to build the payment gateway but the question is where would we connect it?” says Ranjit Srivastava, the director of Lotus Communication, the organisation in charge of the website.

The online reservation system will be an instant hit since Jharkhand is one of the hottest spots during this time of the year mostly attracting tourists from Bengal.Therefore, there should be a separate system in the hotels in order to avoid any confusion in reserving rooms. Thus to make the website more informative and workable, the officials have even started inviting the hotels for a talk so as to reach to a common conclusion. The officials have also started inviting the banks for the payments.

“I have already sent letters to a most of the banks so that some of them can offer their service on the website. The banks will charge for their service and other facilities and we will decide on them after I compare all the banks. Hotels are also invited to discuss these things with us so that we can reach a common conclusion. However, we have noticed that many hotels do not want to be online because of transparency in the work,” said Arun Singh, the tourism secretary.

Contacting an organisation like Federation of Hotels and Restaurants Association of India is also not possible because many of the hotels in Jharkhand are not registered with such organisations.

If things are not working out, hoteliers suggested to give the hotel’s website link on the page so that the dealing can be directly done but very few of them have a website of their own.