Goa is Delhi’s summer spot, small cities catch up too

Goa was the favoured summer vacation spot for Delhiites despite it being an off season there. Data from Delhi airport showed a 33% passenger increase to the beach destination in June.

Goa was the favoured summer vacation spot for Delhiites despite it being an off season there. Data from Delhi airport showed a 33% passenger increase to the beach destination in June. Moreover, people travelled a lot more from the Capital to smaller airports, which registered exponential growth.

Traffic at smaller airports like Dehradun, Raipur, Ranchi, Surat and Varanasi increased by 40% to 300%.

“If you look at the tourism prospective, Goa was preferred by Delhiites over Srinagar and Kochi. Leh airport too registered 43% growth, which suggests travellers are now picking these destinations instead of the usual ones,” said an airport official, requesting anonymity.

Bagdogra, Leh, Varansi, Ranchi, Indore, Aurangabad and Dehradun were in the list of top ten airports, registering a growth of 36% to 44%.

Vadodara (126%), Raipur (157%) and Surat (301%) were the top three.

According to travel agents, it costs less to travel to Goa during the off season and promotional offers by airlines also spurred growth of traffic.

In 2013-14, Delhi airport handled 36.88 million passengers, the highest ever passenger traffic handled by any airport in the country. Delhi airport has a major market share of air traffic volume to West Asian, European, Asian and American regions and is expected to reach 40 million passengers soon.