Beating summer heat: 25% rise in travellers opting for cooler spots

MUMBAI: As summer holidays for school and college students are around the corner, travel bookings are on the rise. According to travel portals, airline offers have spiked advance booking. Portals claimed they witnessed a 25% hike in summer bookings so far and will increase as the holiday season nears.

Booking trends revealed travellers are targeting cooler destinations to beat the summer heat. Portals claimed customers are pre-booking activities such as river rafting, scuba diving, snorkelling, boat rides, kayaking bike tours and lake treks.

Heena J Akhtar, co-founder of TRIPXOXO, said, “Travellers are booking river rafting in Kolad, scuba diving and snorkelling at Tarkarli, three-lake trek in Manali, banana boat ride in Goa, bike tours in Spiti, kayaking at Kalote lake and Harihareshwar Beach holiday.”

Thomas Cook India said it has observed a growth of 25% in forwarding booking trends for domestic travel as compared to the same period last year.

Rajeev Kale, president and Leisure Travel and MICE at Thomas Cook India said queries and bookings for Summer 2019 have been a healthy mix of short and long hauls, with easy access/simple visa regimes (evisa/visa on arrival), creating added impetus so far.

Karan Anand, head of relationships and supplier management at Cox & Kings India, said the company encourages travellers to book early as they will get the best deals. He added, “Summer is a very busy travel period and we expect the demand to go up quite significantly. The destinations that are in demand during summer are Europe, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and exotic destinations such as Turkey, South Africa and Kenya.”

Portals said bookings for Eastern European countries such as Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia will pick up and be more preferred for summer travel. Industry experts said that in the domestic market, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, Ooty, the Nilgiris and hill stations of Kerala attract a large number of tourists.

Daniel D’souza, head of sales, India, NRI markets and e-commerce at SOTC, “The Indian traveller is value-driven. The new trend is the innovative ‘dynamic packaged holiday’ to attract more cost-conscious and variety-loving customers,” he added.

“While DIY (do it yourself) travellers are increasing, the trend of booking through travel companies continues,” said, Kapil Goswamy, managing director of Bigbreaks.com.