Hotels in Delhi are expected to sell out during the last week of October with almost 1.5 lakh visitors expected for the race. The Jaypee Group, which has built the track, has already booked close to 6,000 room nights in the city for the large contingent of F1 teams and administrators that will descend on the city for close to 10 days as per a report by Ravi Teja Sharma & Meenakshi Verma Ambwani in ET.

"Bernie Ecclestone has asked us to book about 600 rooms in the city for the F1 administration and some teams, which itself is a large number," says Manju Sharma, director, Jaypee Hotels. Most of the teams are booking hotel rooms by themselves. An F1 team can have between 80 and 100 members and there are 12 teams taking part. The F1 boss and the drivers will stay at JP Greens Golf & Spa Resorts in Greater Noida, which also has a Six Senses spa. The resort management has been briefed about the special diet for the drivers and their stay requirements, which have been arranged.

The race, India's first, follows Diwali, which is usually a lean period for hotels in the city. Sharma expects the race to be a silver lining for hotels in the National Capital Region region. With only a few hotels in the Noida-Greater Noida area, Delhi hotels will be the ones to benefit from this. Hotels such as Le Meridien, The Lalit, Park, The Imperial and others have got bookings from Jaypee recently. This is a good sign for hotels just when sales were dipping due slowdown in the US, the new circuit in Greater Noida's newly laid racing track is helping leading hotels in Delhi and the NCR see some traction

Tickets for the October 30 race at the 120,000-capacity Buddh International Circuit went on sale last Saturday, with prices ranging from Rs 2,500 to Rs 35,000. This is one of the reasons that the profile of travellers expected to come for the event is in the premium category