Intrepid Indians love to spend more, explore more

Chennai: More than the travel offers and discounted airfares, it's the urge for travel that is making several Indian families explore more destinations within the country and there has been an increasing trend among both the urban and rural women to travel for religious and medical purposes. On average, the expenditure incurred on same-day trip combining all leading purposes was Rs 620 at all-India level and of this shopping (35 per cent) and social (34 per cent ) were the two most frequent purposes for same-day trips undertaken by the rural households, whereas, from urban areas nearly half of the trips were for social purposes. And when it comes to expenditure on overnight trips health and medical tours were the costliest overnight trips with average expenditure per trip of Rs 15,336 followed by trips with leading purpose of shopping Rs 13,902.

Interestingly, contrary to belief that cheap airfares and railways were the key drivers of travel, the National Sample Survey (NSS) on “Key Indicators of Domestic Tourism in India” released by the Centre on Wednesday, reveals that a majority of Indians prefer travelling by bus when it comes to undertaking trips within the country. Bus was the dominant mode of travel for nearly 70 per cent and 55 per cent of the travellers in rural and urban areas respectively, either for business, social, religious & pilgrimage, education & training and others.

The average number of nights spent on overnight visitor trips during the last 365 days for holidaying, leisure & recreation, health & medical and shopping were 5.4 and 6.7 nights in rural and urban areas respectively, as per information collected during July, 2014 to June, 2015 as a part of NSS 72nd Round. Similar survey on the same subject was conducted by NSSO during July 2008 - June 2009 as part of NSS 65th Round. The Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey was designed to collect detailed information on tourism expenditure along with some information on household characteristics, visitor characteristics and trip characteristics relating to domestic overnight trips for preparing the third Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) by Ministry of Tourism. The survey covered the whole of the India and the results of the survey are based on samples from 8,001 villages and 6,061 urban blocks. In TN, 4,340 rural and 4,145 urban households were surveyed.