India becoming a top tourism destination
WITH travellers rejecting frugality and digging deeper into their pockets to seek world-class experiences, the Indian travel and tourism industry is firming up plans to cash in on their arrivals.
India has already moved up six places to rank 34th on the World Travel and Tourism Competitive Index 2019 – recently released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
And with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation predicting that the country will account for nearly 50 million tourists by 2020, the Indian travel and tourism industry is eyeing a bigger share of the world tourism pie.
“While large sectors in India are laying off people, the percentage of tourism jobs has risen by 2.9% in past years.
“Tourism is poised to find a place among the top five career options for millennials, who also are a major traveller segment,” said Mohit Poddar, the CEO and co-founder of Shoes on Loose.
“Rising personal incomes and changing lifestyles, availability of lower fares, and diverse travel packages are pushing the more affluent Indian middle class to spend more on travel,” said IPE Global MD Ashwajit Singh.
Ankit Rastogi, the head of accommodation and activities at Cleartrip, said Indians were allocating budgets to travel like never before, and their own data corroborated the trend.
“Comparable to developed economies of the world, Indians spent close to 11% of their average disposable income on travel and tourism.
“As per Cleartrip data, travellers are willing to spend more on travel, evident from the share of 4- and 5-star hotels moving up to about 40% in 2019,” said Rastogi.
And solo travellers are as much a part of this trend. “In terms of an absolute number, there are more male solo travellers. But if you look at the ratio over time, out of all the solo travellers coming on Ithaka in 2018, about 19% were women, and this year their number has gone up to 26%,” Ithaka Travel co-founder and CEO Rahul Singh said.
According to Royal Caribbean Cruises CEO Varun Chadha, India’s burgeoning middle class seeks novel vacation options apart from the traditional fly/land tour packages.
“On a cruise holiday, guests get to see and do more, especially since they have the chance to visit multiple countries on one cruise.”
“Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, China and South Africa are among the countries becoming popular,” said Sunil Gupta, the MD and CEO of car rental company Avis India.
“For domestic travel, people prefer to explore destinations in states like Kerala, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh,” he said. Indians are seeing international destinations, especially short-haul ones, as affordable, but there is also a renewed zeal to explore domestic locations, propelled by the weekend travel trend.
Almost all the companies that IANS spoke to lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to Indians to visit 15 destinations by 2022 and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s promise of developing 17 model sites to encourage inbound tourism in her maiden budget speech. Travel platform TripAdvisor also announced its strong focus on helping the Indian traveller discover more at home.
Dharamveer Singh Chouhan, the co-founder and CEO of hostelbooking giant Zostel, sees a change in the way Indian travellers finalise their travel destinations – seeking to immerse themselves in local culture and surroundings.
“A couple opting for a home stay in Kotgarh would be interested in trying their hands at organic farming and plucking apples from the orchard there. People are looking to ditch hotels for more experiential stays.”
Ithaka Travel stresses the need for personalisation and trip curation along with side travel deals, easy loan approvals and quick access to guidance for planning, as both the travellers and the industry push the boundaries for new experiences. | IANS