Working class and millennials will fuel growth
He adds that a ‘fit to travel’ certificate will become a reality in the coming days. “When you look at some of the numbers, we have 26.3 million people who travelled outbound in 2019 out of India. We were soon to reach the 50 million mark but that will now take a while after COVID-19; at least 3-4 years. I do not think any of us need to lose hope as long as we know how to survive. To give you a clear picture of what helps outbound tourism market and what makes the demand kick, I think connectivity is important,” Singh says.
Evolved visa COVID-19? process after
According to Malhotra, at this point in time, none of the governments are busy preparing visa regimes or new norms. “They are all currently occupied in ensuring the health and safety of their citizens. The governments we work with are also extremely busy with the repatriation of their citizens who are currently overseas. For any and every visa change that happens, VFS Global will ensure it reaches people on time. I would urge everyone
“The working class and millennial sectors will fuel tourism. The resilient nature of the travel industry will secure its medium and long-term future. The working-class population will be crucial for that. Instant travel demand will be created by different demographics of the Indian population post COVID-19. India has grown considerably in terms of intra-country demand in recent times, which has helped the cash flow and the economy as well. There is no doubt that domestic tourism will be crucial in the short-term recovery plan.” sources. So, I would urge you to only believe in information from authentic sources and that one source could be our website,” he said.
Malhotra also feels that the price of a visa could go either way, as countries may want more and more tourists to come in. “More and more countries are liberal in granting visas for longer durations and therefore, the price automatically does gain some elasticity. But, what is important is that the new normal will be quite different from what it is today. Even we are already planning in visa centres, how we can ensure social distancing, how we can ensure more hygiene, how we can ensure more use of digitalisation and technology,
– Sandeep Dwivedi
travel, and the availability of hotel rooms in each of these countries. So, whenever you see that there's more demand, it happens because there are more flights, more seats. Dubai has always led that side of the business from our company. There were over 600 flights a week, thousands of seats going in. That is why we were able to achieve our target of serving over 2 million passengers
out of India last year, followed by growth for markets like Singapore, Thailand, Bali, Maldives and some other destinations. If you look at the kind of impact direct flights to Phuket and Krabi from India had on travellers, you can see an 18% jump, compared to 8-9% average growth they achieved over the last five years.”
He predicts that anytime between August and September this year, we will start to see the
it is safe to travel, I am sure the tourism bodies, airlines, DMCs, tour operators - everybody will put in time, money and effort to promote this sentiment of travel. There will be a lot of last-minute bookings. By next April, we will be back where we used to be,” Singh believes.
Weddings and M!CE will pick up?
Singh believes that this is an issue across the world and not outbound or domesticrelated. “So, if weddings can happen in India, they can happen anywhere in the world. This will, however, depend on governments, how those destinations have taken care of situations and how they have prepared themselves to be COVID- free. So, if India will have large gatherings, so will Thailand, Malaysia and other countries. Intra- region travel to short- haul destinations will increase. I do not see any challenge. Yes, the format will change for M! CE over the next six to nine months. The numbers will not be that big. So, you will not see a thousand people traveling for incentive. There will be rationalisation in the number of people travelling together,” he explains.
Sandeep Dwivedi