Travel portals ride on early recovery
Local travel is showing early signs of recovery with business climbing to 40-50 per cent of pre-covid levels, heads of online travel start-ups say. Increased pace of vaccination and easing of lockdown curbs is aiding recovery; however, it’s clipped because only 72.5 per cent of airlines are allowed to fly under current rules.
EaseMyTrip said it clocked ~225 crore gross sales in July as compared to ~356 crore in Apriljune quarter and ~907 crore in January-march quarter. “From whatever of August we have seen so far, we see it faring better than July,” said Rikant Pittie, co-founder, EaseMyTrip.
Vaccinations, he added, have given confidence to travellers and the effect of the third wave, if there is one, will be less severe. “The vaccination drive is helping tremendously. Those who are fully vaccinated are going to travel. We are not worried about the third wave as travellers are more confident this time around.”
Confidence is also building for international destinations, according to Ixigo. “Search enquiries for travel to international destinations saw an increase of 45-50 per cent in the first week of August 2021 as compared to the same time last month. Countries people are searching for include the Maldives, Switzerland, Germany, Qatar, Turkey, Nepal and France,” said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and chief executive, Ixigo.
However, data shows air travel recovery is slower than some companies might like to think. Passenger traffic on all Indian airports combined averaged 16.8 million each month, over January to March this year, before falling to 12.5 million in April, according to the Airports Authority of India. The figures in May and June were 4.5 million and 6.5 million, respectively.
During the pandemic, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) regulated flight operators’ capacity. During the second wave, the domestic capacity — reduced from 80 per cent of pre-covid levels to 50 per cent on June 1 — was first increased to 65 per cent in July and is now at 72.5 per cent. Executives said they are waiting for such conditions to be lifted.
Meanwhile, metro-to-metro and non-metro to metro travel is also bouncing back. Some large corporations have announced plans to reopen offices, leading to re-influx of the workforce, while travel for personal reasons — including marriages — is picking up, albeit marginally.
According to Ixigo, routes Chennai-Coimbatore, New Delhi-chandigarh and New Delhi-kanpur saw bookings rise 23 per cent, 37 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively, in the first week of August as compared to the same time the previous month. Ixigo is in the process of launching its initial public offering, which points to the company’s estimates for sustained recovery in the near term.