Chennai: Cheaper flight tickets, a plethora of budget hotel deals and a stable rupee are among the numerous factors influencing visitors on the destination choices this festive season. Many Indians are looking at weekends as an opportunity to escape from their monotonous city schedules to indulge in short getaways.
The “luxury” travel segment also appears to be an emerging trend. Rupee stability has allowed an increase in the spending capacity to about Rs 50,000 per person per trip. Domestic travel, particularly for shorter trips, is considerably more affordable.
Nearly 47.4 per cent of Indians prefer travelling with their families during festivals. The trend of booking in advance continues be on the rise with a whopping number of 68 % people booking more than 15 days ahead of their travel date.
As per a survey conducted amongst 5,098 respondents by Yatra.com on the outlook of Indian travellers planning their vacations this season, an overwhelming 67 % of respondents are planning to travel during the festival season, leveraging the long weekends over Diwali and Dussehra. The data suggests desktops and mobiles to be the preferred medium of booking and shows a steep decline in demand for travel agents with the number being a mere 10.6 %. Also, more than 60% of the travellers prefer credit card as the mode of payment.
Budget hotels were the obvious choice of accommodation with 47.8 % per cent opting for them though 32 % respondents chose to opt for 4/5 star luxury properties. Commenting on the findings from the survey, Sharat Dhall, President, Yatra.com said, “Vacationing in the festive months seems to have become the norm amongst Indian travellers. With Durga Puja, Navratri, Dussehra and Deepavali on the horizon, we have observed an increase in leisure travel, reflected by improvement in passenger loads on flights to beach and hill destinations.”
