More and more people are planning trips within the country for the coming long weekend, reveals data from a portal. Based on bookings from March 27 to April 4 this year, Booking.com, an online travel agency, said that Goa, New Delhi, Jaipur, Rishikesh and Mumbai are among the top domestic destinations booked by Indians from Holi to Easter.
During the same period, hostels and home stays have emerged as the top booked accommodation, apart from the usual hotels, resorts, and guest houses, they said.
The portal said that apart from the top destinations mentioned above, Darjeeling, Puri, Udaipur, Bengaluru and Manali also made it to the list of preferred places to visit in the country.
Ritu Mehrotra, regional manager, South Asia, Booking.com said, “2020 was difficult for all of us in the travel sector, but there is hope for the future. We are seeing a heightened desire to travel where travellers are utilising long weekends to make plans on our platform across the country. With travellers optimistic about making the most of long weekends, there is also an increased importance for health and safety, flexibility and diversity in experiences.”
As far as mode of travel is concerned, trains are likely to see a surge in passengers this weekend. Swapnil Tripathi, chief business officer, IntrCity RailYatri, a single-window platform offering inter-city travel services by train or bus, said, “As the economy started improving, the Indian inter-city mobility sector has touched 80-85% of the pre-Covid bookings as of February 2021. Reserved trains have reached around 75% of the pre-Covid level while intercity buses have done slightly better on most of the active routes to reach 75-100% of pre-Covid bookings. However, the consumers is now looking for hygiene, sanitisation and safe travel and that is where organised players have done better than others.”
{{/usCountry}}As far as mode of travel is concerned, trains are likely to see a surge in passengers this weekend. Swapnil Tripathi, chief business officer, IntrCity RailYatri, a single-window platform offering inter-city travel services by train or bus, said, “As the economy started improving, the Indian inter-city mobility sector has touched 80-85% of the pre-Covid bookings as of February 2021. Reserved trains have reached around 75% of the pre-Covid level while intercity buses have done slightly better on most of the active routes to reach 75-100% of pre-Covid bookings. However, the consumers is now looking for hygiene, sanitisation and safe travel and that is where organised players have done better than others.”
{{/usCountry}}“Overall, we have witnessed that bookings on all our pre-Covid operational routes are rising fast, especially on high-velocity routes like Delhi-Lucknow, Delhi-Amritsar, Bengaluru-Hyderabad, Bengaluru-Chennai, and Chennai-Madurai,” he said.