MUMBAI: For the Indian traveller, a defining characteristic of 2014 was that domestic air ticket sale offers, few and hard to come by in the last few years, went perennial this year. The ever-present advance purchase discount fare offers brought on a new found ease in netting a bargain. And one of the outcomes was that more and more Indians took to tracking airfares and booking short holidays on the go, that is, using mobile phone apps.
"The year witnessed a robust traveller sentiment - airfares were quite affordable on longer advance purchase windows, mobile bookings were incentivized heavily to promote the platform and overall economic indicators looked up. Travellers preferred multiple, short vacations this year," said Rajesh Magow, co-founder and CEO-India, makemytrip, online travel portal.
For Sharat Dhall, president, yatra, an online travel portal, 2014 was the year of long weekends as they saw a huge amount of short-haul travel concentrated around these weekends. "Nearly 50% of our domestic holiday bookings this year happened for the shorter breaks. Most of our weekend packages to destinations close to metros were sold out during these periods which led us to increase our inventory and provide more options to last-minute travellers," Dhall said.
Rajeev Kale, president and COO, MICE, Thomas Cook India said they witnessed a spike in customers who plan short-haul vacations to explore domestic destinations- closer home. "For instance, for Mumbaikars, domestic destinations like the Konkan, Aurangabad, Goa, Daman, Mount Abu, Gujarat etc hold strong allure as quick getaways. Our domestic teams have reported a significant increase of over 35% in bookings to a diverse range of domestic favorites like Coorg, Hampi, Pondicherry, Goa, Konkan, Shimla, Manali, Darjeeling, Digha, Gangtok," said Kale. Neelu Singh, COO, ezeego1, an online travel portal said: "Interest in exploring newer destinations and advance holiday planning have certainly been the two key highlights of 2014."
But the most exciting trend this year according to Dhall was the emergence of the mobile as a significant channel for browsing and booking travel. "We saw close to 30% of our bookings and 40% of our traffic coming via the mobile website and mobile applications. We anticipate in the next few years 50% of our total bookings will come from the mobile platform," Dhall said.
Another trend was the increase in number of Indians who look for more personalised and unique travel experiences. Karan Anand, head, relationships, Cox and Kings said: "The key takeaway for 2014 was the rise in adventure travel and themes based travel products such as culinary holidays, marine tours, expedition cruises etc." Kale said: "For today's Indian consumer, travel is increasingly an exploration of non-traditional offbeat experiences."
As for popular outbound destinations, Thailand continued to be the favorite with Indians, followed by Singapore and Malaysia.
"The year witnessed a robust traveller sentiment - airfares were quite affordable on longer advance purchase windows, mobile bookings were incentivized heavily to promote the platform and overall economic indicators looked up. Travellers preferred multiple, short vacations this year," said Rajesh Magow, co-founder and CEO-India, makemytrip, online travel portal.
For Sharat Dhall, president, yatra, an online travel portal, 2014 was the year of long weekends as they saw a huge amount of short-haul travel concentrated around these weekends. "Nearly 50% of our domestic holiday bookings this year happened for the shorter breaks. Most of our weekend packages to destinations close to metros were sold out during these periods which led us to increase our inventory and provide more options to last-minute travellers," Dhall said.
Rajeev Kale, president and COO, MICE, Thomas Cook India said they witnessed a spike in customers who plan short-haul vacations to explore domestic destinations- closer home. "For instance, for Mumbaikars, domestic destinations like the Konkan, Aurangabad, Goa, Daman, Mount Abu, Gujarat etc hold strong allure as quick getaways. Our domestic teams have reported a significant increase of over 35% in bookings to a diverse range of domestic favorites like Coorg, Hampi, Pondicherry, Goa, Konkan, Shimla, Manali, Darjeeling, Digha, Gangtok," said Kale. Neelu Singh, COO, ezeego1, an online travel portal said: "Interest in exploring newer destinations and advance holiday planning have certainly been the two key highlights of 2014."
But the most exciting trend this year according to Dhall was the emergence of the mobile as a significant channel for browsing and booking travel. "We saw close to 30% of our bookings and 40% of our traffic coming via the mobile website and mobile applications. We anticipate in the next few years 50% of our total bookings will come from the mobile platform," Dhall said.
Another trend was the increase in number of Indians who look for more personalised and unique travel experiences. Karan Anand, head, relationships, Cox and Kings said: "The key takeaway for 2014 was the rise in adventure travel and themes based travel products such as culinary holidays, marine tours, expedition cruises etc." Kale said: "For today's Indian consumer, travel is increasingly an exploration of non-traditional offbeat experiences."
As for popular outbound destinations, Thailand continued to be the favorite with Indians, followed by Singapore and Malaysia.
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