Mumbai: Most Indians are likely to travel to New York, Dubai and Bangkok in the first half of the current calender year, according to a report. The three cities feature in the top searched destinations for the first half of 2017, said the report by global travel search engine KAYAK.
The data is based on the search results from the Kayak site since last year. London and Singapore were the other two destinations Indians are looking at to travel during the first six months of this year, it added.
Destinations such as Amsterdam, Athens and Male are the top three trending destinations amongst Indian holiday- makers, the report said. Amsterdam remained a hot destination with a 283 per cent increase in the volumes of searches, followed by Athens (185 per cent) and Male (117 per cent), it added.
"Over the past few months, we have observed that Indian travellers are willing to explore newer destinations. We saw a lot of interest being built for destinations like Amsterdam, Athens and Male becoming popular.
"As for travel planning, we saw that Indian travelers continue to plan their travel well in advance. The most interesting nugget of information, however, was on the search timings. Indian travellers seem to make travel searches mostly during noon," KAYAK Country Manager India Abhijit Mishra said.
However, in cities like Mumbai and Kolkata, the search hour was indicated to be 3:30 to 4:30 pm, which also was the second most preferred timing for the Indians to make travel plans and book their tickets, he added.
The least preferred time for Indians was revealed to be from 4:40?5:30 pm, the report said. The search highlighted that Indians are willing to take an extra holiday and begin their journey on Friday as compared to waiting till Sunday.
Fridays, the report revealed, remained the most popular journey start day for Indians with Saturday coming a close second, it added. Be it leisure or business travel, the data showed that in 2016, the average trip duration for Indians was seven days.
Travellers from Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Hyderabad displayed a longer average trip duration compared to tourists from Pune and Jaipur. The average travel duration for Ahmedabad was 11 days, followed by Mumbai and Hyderabad (eight days each), the report added.
