World Tourism Day 2026: Your holiday now starts before you board the flight, and travel brands know it

Indian travellers increasingly value airport lounges, loyalty rewards, personalised benefits and seamless experiences as integral parts of their holidays today.

There was a time when I reached an airport with one fairly simple agenda: check in, get through security, find coffee and reach my gate. Anything nice that happened in between was a bonus.

That relationship with airports has changed rather dramatically. Lounge access is saved on our cards, reward points are checked before bookings are made, and airport dining benefits can influence where we spend the two hours before a flight. The holiday, in many ways, has already started before anyone calls your boarding group. And travel companies have noticed.

This World Tourism Day, one interesting shift in Indian travel is happening not at the destination, but in all those hours surrounding the flight. The airport experience and the benefits attached to a booking are becoming part of what travellers consider when judging value.

The airport is no longer just the waiting room

Rohan Bhalla, Commercial MD, South, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand at Collinson International, says luxury for many Indian travellers has moved beyond simply buying premium products. “For many Indian travellers today, luxury extends beyond premium products to a seamless, well-considered journey,” he says.

The numbers from Collinson International make the airport part of this conversation particularly interesting. According to its research in India:

• 93% of travellers have used a lounge or another premium airport service at least once
• 83% say card-linked lounge access has improved their airport experience
• More than half of Priority Pass members surveyed say they would actively take steps to retain their membership

That last figure says quite a bit. Lounge access is no longer necessarily something you use because your credit card happens to offer it. For some travellers, access itself has become a benefit worth keeping.

Bhalla says airport experiences are increasingly influencing how travellers think about “value, comfort and status”, with demand expanding beyond lounges into dining, wellness and relaxation options.

Your flight ticket is becoming just one part of the deal

Then there is another change happening quietly behind your bookings. Airlines increasingly want a relationship with travellers that begins before the flight and continues after baggage collection. Amresh Acharya, Managing Director and CEO of Loylty Rewardz, points out that airline passengers represent a particularly valuable consumer group for marketers. This has encouraged airlines to work with hotels, banks, airport retailers, travel experience companies and consumer brands.

In practical terms, the traveller is no longer collecting a benefit from just one company.

“Airlines are now teaming up with other travel providers like hotels, travel experience providers, financial institutions such as card issuing banks, shopping outlets like duty-free shops and other D2C goods and service providers,” says Acharya. Co-branded cards and coalition loyalty programmes are helping travellers earn rewards across several categories and then use those benefits across a wider group of services.

The next travel perk may know what you actually want

This is also where personalisation enters the airport. Acharya says companies are increasingly using data intelligence, AI platforms and marketing automation to make traveller benefits more contextual. In simple terms, the aim is to stop giving every passenger the same perk and start offering something that fits how that person travels. Bhalla sees personalisation, convenience and digital connectivity becoming increasingly important to premium travel too.

And perhaps that is the bigger World Tourism Day story here. We spend plenty of time talking about where Indians are travelling next. The more interesting question may be what they now expect to happen between booking the ticket and reaching that destination. A comfortable seat still matters. So does a good hotel room. But increasingly, so do the coffee before boarding, the lounge during a long wait, the points sitting in an account and the benefit you did not have to ask for.

The holiday has quietly stretched beyond the destination. Travel brands now want a place in almost every part of it.

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