Indians spend highest on hotels
Accor Asia-pacific Business Traveller Survey 2012 revealed that the modern Indian business travellers were either A-level or C-level executives who like staying ‘connected’ through frequent travel updates online.
The
survey interviewed over 2,500 respondents from nine countries in AsiaPacific. It divulges that Indian travellers have one of the highest hotel budgets in AsiaPacific, spending an average of US$ 399 per trip. Only Singaporeans spend more, averaging US$ 468. In terms of nights spend on accommodation, Indians rank third at US$ 133, up from US$ 128 last year. Australians and Singaporeans took the top spots, at US$ 173 and US$ 156, respectively, with Mainland Chinese (US$ 98) and Indonesian (US$ 81) travellers spending the least.
The survey also revealed that compared to fellow travellers in the region, Indian business travellers were mostly entrepreneurs with 17% of respondents saying they own their own business. Across Asia-Pacific, the average is 10%, with Australia and New Zealand tied for second place at 14% each and Singapore (5%) and Mainland China (4%) rounding out the bottom. Indian travellers also take business trips to visit customers, with 58% of respondents citing customer visits as a reason for travel, followed closely by Mainland China (57%). Regionally, an average of 40% of travellers are engaged in customer visits, with Indonesian travellers making the least customer visit at 26%.
India had the lowest female-to-male ratio among Asia-Pacific business travellers, with women making up a paltry 6% of travellers. The regional average was 26%, with Thailand (40%), Australia (33%) and New Zealand (30%) leading the pack. Even countries with not-so-stellar ratios, like Mainland China (16%) and Indonesia (10%) led India.
Also when it comes to making reservations, business travellers from India book directly on the hotel’s website. 69% of respondents say they usually make reservations via the hotel’s online booking channel and further 19% say they use online travel agents. None of the respondents said they used offline travel agents or call centres. This result is substantiated by the finding that Indian business travellers believe that hotel branded websites provide the most competitive rates, whereas only 12% of them think independent websites offer the cheapest prices.