Canadian NRIs jittery over visa row as wedding season nears

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, September 22

With just about three weeks left for the Navratris to begin, Doaba is set to host a string of NRI weddings across various palaces and resorts here for the next five months. But the strained ties between India and Canada have left the families of brides and grooms, who had been planning a big, fat weddings, worried.

20% hotel bookings cancelled

Bathinda: The hospitality sector in Punjab has started facing the heat of the ongoing India-Canada diplomatic row with NRIs putting off their visit to India ahead of the festival and wedding season. Sources said even as the Indian authorities had suspended visa services in Canada, at least 20 per cent hotel bookings had been cancelled in the state.

Punjab Hotel Association president Satish Arora said, “If the situation is not improved, we will see more cancellations in the coming days.” He said after being hit by floods, the hospitality sector was expecting some relief during the upcoming festival and wedding season, but this crisis was set to deal another blow to the sector. “We were banking on NRIs for a turnaround. They spend lavishly on their family events and weddings, but it’s all uncertain now,” he rued. Arora said the NRIs had started postponing their events as nobody was ready to take risk amid uncertainty over immigration and visa rules.

“The development will not only affect the hoteliers, but also vendors like caterers, florists, DJs, decorators and others,” he said, adding that the government must make efforts to resolve the issue at the earliest.

—Sukhmeet Bhasin

NRIs’ families have said they are not going ahead with the bookings in hotels as of now as they want the situation to be clear. They are on a wait-and-watch mode for the next few days before proceeding with extending invites and doing the shopping.

“Both my sister and would-be brother-in-law are in Vancouver and they have already got the tickets booked for the next month as the wedding is scheduled for November 4. We have got the palace booked for the wedding. We were to get hotel room bookings done for the groom’s family and relatives coming from Canada. They have asked us to wait for now till the situation becomes clear,” said Riya, a resident of Ladhewali here.

The situation is not good for palace owners and hoteliers. Prabhjot Singh Sidhu, who owns a wedding palace here, said, “We have a lot of bookings for NRI weddings, mostly from Canada, lined up in the next few months. The issue has led to anxiety among the families. I have been getting telephonic queries daily from them but no one has so far got any booking cancelled.”

Likewise, hotelier Rajan Chopra too has said, “We had hardly recovered from the losses incurred due to Covid. The tension will impact our business. No one wants to travel when there is tension owing to such political situation.