’11 sees Aug rush among tourists

Unlike April, May or December, August is not usually one of those months when vacationers can be seen milling about airports, roads and hotels. So, when the travel industry saw an upsurge of holidayers in August this year, it seemed to indicate that short trips had become popular among the average Indians, who would head to a nearby hill station or a beach resort whenever a public holiday dovetailed with a weekend.
This August logged quite a few long weekends. Independence Day fell on a Monday and the Parsi New Year (August 19) on a Friday. Then there was Janmasthami on August 22, which was a Monday. “The vacation season usually peaks during the summer, Diwali and Christmas holidays. But this year, the weekends in August saw a lot of bookings from leisure travellers,” said Noel Swain, executive vice-president, supplier relations of online travel portal Cleartrip. “This year, we also witnessed a change: many Indians have started booking early for their short vacations. The average was 10-15 days in advance. It probably has to do with the Augustspecific marketing done by travel portals and airlines.”
Deep Kalra, CEO, Make-MyTrip, another travel portal, said this August was a good month for the industry. “We are heavily focused on domestic travel and long weekends and we proactively approached customers for August weekends,” said Kalra. However, he feels that the average Indian traveller has not really started booking in advance. “We always have a few customers who book in advance. But India largely is a late booking market, except when it comes to summer holidays,” he adds. “For domestic and weekend short holidays, some people even book a day before the weekend. Typically, most of the weekend bookings are done at the start of the week.”
Manmeet Ahluwalia, marketing head of Expedia, an online travel portal, too said that short vacations have become de rigueur and with this in view, their company had launched a special campaign targeting August’s long weekend travellers. “Hotels in hill stations do not have too many rooms. So, we were sold out in August as people rushed for short vacations to hill stations like Shimla, Manali, Nainital, Mussoorie, Mahabaleshwar, Lonavla, Ooty and Kodaikanal,” Ahluwalia said. “Southeast Asia too was sold out, with couples booking tour packages in advance for typical 3-4 night destinations like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Bali,’’ he added.
Apart from August, the year was generally good — at least till airlines started cutting down on domestic flights in November — as the number of air tickets sold by some travel portals saw a perceptible increase this year as compared to the last. “The number of domestic flights booked to Delhi was about 1.5 lakh this year as compared to 1 lakh last year, bringing about an increase of 46% in our bookings,” said Swain. Similarly, domestic flight bookings to Mumbai grew by 30%, Bangalore by 41% and Hyderabad by 39%. “The growth in number of air tickets sold had nothing to do with pricing, it was purely because of increased demand for air travel,” he added.