Navratri is here, but guests who were expected to relish traditional hospitality in Gujarati homes have given the hosts a miss.Two days after the state’s ambitious attempt to attract foreigners got underway, the handful of foreigners who arrived drove straight to hotels or to their relatives’ homes, leaving their prospective hosts clueless. Their houses decked up, the hosts are wondering what to do with the new ACs they installed to make the guests feel at home in tropical Gujarat.Worse, nobody is telling them whether anybody is coming or will come shortly. Of the 150 NRIs expected in Rajkot, only four turned up on Friday. They too opted to stay at hotels, leaving residents who had done up their houses disappointed. Except information of their arrival, no government agency, including the Collectorate and Tourism Department, had any idea of how many people have come and for how long they would stay in Rajkot.‘‘They have directly checked into hotels,’’ Rajkot Collector J.P. Gupta said. ‘‘Maybe they wanted to enjoy the festival by themselves and would have found it uncomfortable in other people’s houses,’’ a top-level Collectorate official said.Rajkot Rotary Club president Dr Vibhakar Vacchrajani installed a new AC at his residence, but even after the guests had checked into hotels, he kept waiting as no one informed him that the wait would be fruitless. Ahmedabad did not fare any better. Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Ltd managing director D.K. Rao said: ‘‘Most of the guests are Non-Resident Gujaratis (NRGs) and NRIs. Though they have come for business meets, they chose to stay with distant relatives. So the demand for traditional hospitality is not much.’’According to NRG Bhavan records, only four foreigners requested accommodation. Rao said: ‘‘As many as 416 houses in Ahmedabad and 50 farm houses are listed as hosts in and around the city. In Gandhinagar, 120 additional houses were chosen, in case there was a rush.’’If families felt let down, hoteliers weren’t spared either. A Vadodara hotel that had booked 20 rooms for NRI guests, cancelled the reservation on Friday.
