Travel bookings improve across India

As Covid cases across the country continue to decrease, Indians have started making travel plans

As Covid cases across the country continue to decrease, Indians have started making travel plans. Tourists had stopped travelling for around two months amid the second wave of the pandemic.

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According to RateGain, a SaaS player (a web application managed by a travel technology provider) bookings are growing at a healthy 20% rate, week on week. Moreover, according to RateGain, around 50% increase in week on week bookings have been seen, in the last fortnight driven majorly by Delhi NCR region. RateGain said thatwhile leisure demand would take some time to come back, demand in Delhi, Mumbai went up as businesses, construction activities and manufacturing picked up again.

“In Tier-2 cities, Lucknow saw the sharpest increase which can only be attributed to increased political activity in the city due to the upcoming election in 2022. Shimla and Goa both have started witnessing slight improvement with tourists from Delhi and Mumbai looking to go for staycations as normal life resumes back slowly”, said Kamesh Shukla, EVP and Head for APMEA-RateGain.

MakeMyTrip said they have seen a steady increase in searches and bookings for air travel in the past week. “This indicates that more people are planning and booking travel again. Over the past two months, last-minute travel for medical or emergency purposes continued and now as the severity of the crisis reduces in the coming weeks, people will take to travel to meet family or friends, and for business purposes,” said Saujanya Shrivastava, chief operating officer, flights- strategic business units, MakeMyTrip.

Cleartrip also said there are very initial signs of recovery with reduced caseloads and relaxation of restrictions by several states. “Traffic and booking volumes have almost doubled from a couple of weeks ago. Share of round trips and advance bookings has also seen an uptick. Both these metrics have been good lead indicators of consumer confidence in the past 12 months or so,” said Rajiv Subramanian, vice president, Cleartrip.