NEW DELHI: Call it the AI impact. Hotel room tariffs have soared to as high as Rs 5.5 lakh a night, with suites going for Rs 30 lakh in the Capital’s top hotels as global IT leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva converge for the AI Summit.NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Google CEO Sundar Pichai will also be in the capital. So far, 1.5 lakh people, including over 10,000 foreign delegates, have registered for the AI Impact Summit 2026 being held with Bharat Mandapam as the main venue. The main dates of Feb 19 and 20 have seen the last few rooms going for as high as Rs 5.5 lakh a night. Hotels such as Maurya, Taj Mahal & Palace, Leela, Oberoi, Imperial & JW Marriott are sold out. Several hotels in Aerocity are commanding a price tag of over Rs 50,000 a night.Advisories out as exam dates clash with summitFor the organisers, finding hotel rooms is not so much of an issue as they had blocked 250-300 rooms several months in advance. They are grappling with a different challenge as the event coincides with board exams, which kick off on Feb 17. The main worry is for Feb 19, when Engineering Graphics and Cost Accounting exams for class XII are scheduled, and Feb 20, when class XII students are scheduled to write their physics exams. Officials said, organisers are reaching out to students who live around the main venues or have centres near them to sensitise them. Advisories are also going out for other days.With PMs of the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia, along with UK deputy PM David Lammy and his counterparts from Sweden and South Korea also in town, security in central Delhi will be tight.The IT ministry, which is hosting the summit, is also ensuring that venue arrangements go beyond food and water availability to focus on delegate comfort and sustainability.
