‘MORE PEOPLE FLYING FROM TIER-2 CITIES TO METROS’

MUMBAI: Domestic air traffic has witnessed an increase as the Covid-19 positivity rate in the country continues to remain low. Travel portals said domestic fliers from tier-2 cities travelling to metros have led to growth in air traffic as compared to fliers from metro cities.

According to portals, there has been around 35% increase in the air traffic from tier-2 cities to metros. Nishant Pitti, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of EaseMyTrip.com, said there has been a surge in air travel to smaller destinations post the second wave, as people want to reduce travel time and are ready to spend more money to travel on a direct flight to reach their destinations.

“Metro-metro and non-metro to metro travel are bouncing back. Bookings from cities like Varanasi, Darbhanga, Patna, Gorakhpur to metros have seen a jump of 30-35% in the last one month,” said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder, group CEO of ixigo.

Destinations such as Patna, Varanasi, and Srinagar are making up for most of the top 10 busiest routes in the country since May. “Even in December, when airlines could deploy 80% of their capacity, half of the top 10 routes were to tier-2 cities. For the period of January-June 2021, EaseMyTrip has observed that flight bookings to Delhi from tier-2 cities such as Srinagar and Patna were around 20% higher than the flights to Delhi from metros such as Mumbai and Bengaluru,” Pitti said.

Portals said there has been a surge in last-minute bookings. “In the aftermath of the second wave, we’ve observed a sharp upward trend in consumer’s preferences for smaller cities such as Lucknow, Patna, Noida, Jaipur, Kochi, Guwahati, Agra. OYO’s occupancy has improved in July and August. Currently, we are seeing nearly 80% occupancy compared to pre-second wave in February 2021,” said Yatish Jain, vice-president, chief growth officer, OYO INSEA.