Travel trends: India to see surge in bookings for foreign trips

Indian travellers are raring to fly overseas for vacations, even as they are keen on destinations close to home.

The month of November has brought good news for the international travel as not only India opened up for international tourists from nearly 100 countries, but several countries such as the US and UK are now open for fully vaccinated travellers.

We spoke to EaseMyTrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra.com and all have seen a significant surge in international sector with over 50 percent jump in international travel bookings compared to the January-March period.

International forward bookings are up nearly two times and there is over 400 percent jump in advance bookings for the Christmas week as compared to last year.

The travellers  are now comfortable with booking 30 to 60 days ahead of travel. The traffic via Vande Bharat Mission (VBM), has been growing sequentially since June with traffic up 30 percent in October.

Maldives, UAE, Seychelles, France, UK, US, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Spain are the most popular international destinations currently. While the most awaited list of destinations which are either closed or are open with restrictions include Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, and Indonesia.

As far as fares are concerned travel portals see an unrealistic surge in ticket prices currently due to limited flights and high demand. But expect them to stabilise once there is deployment of more flights.

Experts expect at least 50 percent recovery in leisure and corporate travels by March, 2022. But significant traffic is expected once the ban on scheduled international passenger flights is lifted.