AHMEDABAD/MUMBAI: The Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad seats just over 1.3 lakh spectators.
You would expect a game of cricket in front of a full house there to generate some noise.
But this?Forty-eight hours ahead of India and Australia squaring off in the ICC World Cup final this Sunday, the excitement Manhattan is spiking in ways cricket - in all its glorious uncertainties - possibly hadn't seen before.Over 100 charter flights have been booked to carry the rich and famous to Ahmedabad; airfares to the city have surged six to eight times; hotel tariffs are up 29x; car rental firms never had it so good; and applications for liquor permits in dry Gujarat are said to have hit an all-time high.On Friday, the cheapest one-way fare for a non-stop flight from Hyderabad scheduled to land before 3pm on Sunday was Rs 40,000.Airlines keen to run extra Ahmedabad flights tomorrowFrom Bengaluru, the lowest fare for match day was Rs 29,000.
Delhi to Hyderabad was priced at Rs 22,500.Mandar Bharde, managing director of Mumbai-based MAB Aviation that offers charter services, said his phone hadn't stopped ringing over the past few days.
"I have at least 10 clients on the waiting list.
People are even requesting me to check with clients who have booked charter flights for Sunday if they have any seats vacant," he said.A six-seater Beechcraft costs Rs 8-12 lakh a day to charter, but many operators have hiked prices.
The ongoing round of assembly elections has added to the crunch.In the hospitality space, five-star rooms that used to cost Rs 6,500-12,500, excluding taxes, are going for between Rs 25,000 and Rs 2 lakh for the weekend.
Tariffs for basic rooms in budget hotels have spiralled more than 10 times the peak-season average daily rate, sources said."Airfares had skyrocketed even before India qualified for the final.
There has been a further six to eight-fold surge since in both hotel tariffs and airfares.
This is unprecedented," Bharatt Malik of Yatra Online said.Ahmedabad airport will have all hands on the deck over the weekend to cope with the rush.
A spokesperson said requests from airlines to operate additional flights on Sunday from several cities had been accepted, except during a scheduled airspace closure from 1:25pm to 2:10pm for a special IAF air show."The airport has 57 parking bays, including 16 that are dedicated to charter aircraft.
We are coordinating with charter operators to drop their clients and then fly to nearby airports such as Surat, Bhavnagar, Rajkot and Vadodara for parking," an official said.An SOP for non-standard parking in the event of excess demand for night parking had been prepared.
"Charter aircraft will be parked on vacant aprons, unused taxiways and parking bays allocated for jets," the official said.ICC World Cup 2023: Cricket fever takes on Ahmedabad, hotel room prices surge upto Rs 1.2 lakhDelhi resident Srishti Chaudhry, her husband and a couple of their friends are among the lucky ones arriving on Saturday for what they hope will be the cricketing experience of their lives.Businessman Aditya Bhargava, his wife and six friends are beating the air rush by driving nearly 1000km to Ahmedabad from Delhi with a stopover in Mount Abu.WatchICC World Cup 2023: Cricket fever takes on Ahmedabad, hotel room prices surge upto Rs 1.2 lakh