Home run: Domestic travellers drive tourism sector
Upasana Sharma and her husband Ravi Jha are avid globetrotters. The last two years, however, saw the Chandigarh-based couple stuck at home due to the pandemic. In the backdrop of the Ukraine war and visa restrictions, besides the energy crisis in Europe, they decided against going out of India for vacation. Instead, they planned a trip to Udaipur, which had been on their bucket list for a long time. “When we started planning our trip, we found many luxury properties within the country offering experiences that were impossible to ignore. Also, as there was too much chaos in the international travel sector, we thought why not explore the locations in India this time and experience luxury stay in one of the heritage hotels. We do not regret our decision,” she says.
We need to involve communities to develop sustainable destinations and ensure there is proper air, road and rail connectivity, besides adequate infrastructure. MP Bezbaruah, Former Secretary, Ministry of tourism
The government needs to do an upper capping of the domestic and international airfares so that during the festival season, the airlines do not exploit the situation. — Subhash Goyal, member, national tourism advisory council
What needs to be done
- More than 85 per cent of tourists are confined to 10 states. The tourist traffic needs to be dispersed and unknown places, which have tourism potential, should be developed in a sustained manner, says MP Bezbaruah.
- For inbound tourism from many source markets like the UK, the e-visa has not been reintroduced, with the result that millions of dollars’ worth of foreign exchange has been lost. Says Subhash Goyal, “We urge the government to not only do aggressive digital marketing but also immediately start e-visa for all the countries which was there before the pandemic.”
As per the India Tourism Statistics 2022, the country saw a whopping 67.7 crore domestic tourist footfall in 2021, an increase of 11 per cent from the previous year.
The domestic tourist is bringing in much-needed respite to the industry that suffered immensely during the pandemic, says MP Bezbaruah, secretary general of the Hotel Association of India. “While branded and luxury hotels were among the earliest ones to recover their loyal clientele, small-scale and medium enterprises, which constitute more than 80 per cent of the tourism industry, have not been able to recover fully yet. However, with the way the domestic industry is gaining footfall, the future of tourism looks bright in India. Hopefully, by March 2023, we would be close to pre-Covid levels,” he adds. There is still a lot of uncertainty, he points out, regarding international tourists coming in but if things go right, inbound tourism will recover by the end of next year.
The unavailability of airspace and rerouting of flights due to the Ukraine war and rising aviation turbine fuel cost have resulted in airfares, both domestic and international, going up by more than 100 per cent, says Subhash Goyal, president of the Confederation of Tourism Professionals.
“This is going to further adversely affect the inbound as well as outbound tourism industry that had barely recovered from the devastating impact of the pandemic. Any more increase in prices will see a decrease in the load factor of airlines. This will cause further revenue losses, decline in sales and market losses for the airlines,” adds Goyal, who is also chairman of the STIC Travel and Air Charter Group.
Before the pandemic, the foreign tourist had been the third largest foreign exchange earner for the country. The pandemic changed everything. In 2021, 10.5 lakh foreign tourists visited the country compared to 71.7 lakh in 2020, indicating a negative 85.29 per cent growth rate. According to industry expert Sanjay Wadhwa, “It was not just traditionally popular destinations like Goa, Kerala and Jaipur — the mainstay of foreign tourists — that got affected and saw a fall in hotel room prices. The feeder hotels that entertained the transiting foreign guests, too, had to bear the brunt of this fall in numbers. Places like Mandawa and Bundi in Rajasthan, which have been heavily dependent on foreigner visitors, saw much distress. Most of Rajasthan’s luxury heritage havelis and palaces that earlier saw occupancy throughout the winter months with foreign tourists, now remain available and within reach for domestic tourists. They, too, lapped up this opportunity.”
The numbers speak for themselves. Heritage destinations in remote areas in Rajasthan such as Mandawa, Navalgarh and Mukundgarh saw a sharp decline in revenue per available room. The prices went almost down 30 per cent from their 2019 peak numbers. Likewise, prices in some Goa and Kerala hotels, too, dropped to almost one-third. These are now starting to recover due to the increasing number of domestic as well as inbound tourists.
Wadhwa, who is vice-president (development) at EFCEE hotels, says the pandemic brought with it a new kind of market: this was the wellness-oriented work-from-home client who found bizcation or staycation as an alternative to working full-time at home. Prices of hotels at weekend destinations like Chikmagalur, Madikeri, Puducherry, Panchgani, Lavasa and Lonavala increased after the tourist rush, thanks to the techie crowd of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In northern India, tourists flooded holiday destinations like Srinagar, Gulmarg, Rishikesh and Mashobra, he says. Besides religious tourism, nature tourism, too, got a boost during this period with national parks like Jim Corbett, Ranthambore, Kanha and Pench seeing unprecedented numbers, he adds.
Small properties and homestays such as Chandan Sharma’s Treetops Cottage in Naggar, Himachal, which did very well during the pandemic, continued their lucky run. “Not even a single cottage in our area remained vacant during the two years of the pandemic. The guests were happy to stay for longer periods in the cottages, away from the hustle and bustle of cities. While some guests stayed on for as long as three to four months, many extended their stay to even a year and more. Even after Covid, many of our guests are continuing their stay, with one of them being with us for more than two years now. It works well for the guests as food, laundry, cleaning are taken care of as they live in these natural environs. This works well for our business too.”
Another byproduct of the pandemic’s realisation, says Nishant Pitti, CEO of EaseMyTrip, has been the rise of eco-friendly travel. “An increasing number of our customers now inquire about carbon emissions and how to offset them. This is a very positive trend,” says Pitti.
Closer home, it was easy road connectivity from Chandigarh, good WiFi facility, gaming options for children that saw many families opting for long weekend stays, such as at the hilltop hotel of Fortune Select Forest Hill, Kasauli. Says Shyam Sunder, director of this franchise property, “The brand name made it easy for the hotel to get back tourists once Himachal Pradesh opened its borders. Wellness and hygiene are the two things that customers look for. There are many who come to enjoy our camping, trekking and hiking trips as well as experience the rural life of Mahiya village, where this property is located.”
Besides weekend travel, it was the destination weddings that saved the day for the hotel industry. The farmhouse weddings that were quite popular till the advent of Covid gave way to destination weddings at luxury hotels for the safety protocols being followed there. According to Rajiv Kapoor, general manager of Fairmont Hotel, Jaipur, “We had around 65 destination weddings at our property in 2019. But the numbers went up post-Covid. We are going to cross 105 luxury destination weddings this year.”
Expressing much hope over the emerging tourism scene, Parveen Chander Kumar, executive vice president (sales and marketing) Indian Hotels Company Limited (which runs the Taj Group), says, “The industry has shown great performance in the first quarter of 2022, boosted by a surge in demand across markets and segments, with both occupancy and rates exceeding pre-Covid levels. The consumer is moving towards private and experiential stays, wellness experiences, staycations and bizcations. The booking windows have become shorter, and length of stays is longer. Now that the demand is outstripping the supply, we are looking ahead to a good season.”
Agreeing with him, Shridhar Nair, vice president (operations), The Leela Palaces Hotels and Resorts, says, “While inbound travel into India is yet to take off to pre-pandemic levels, early signs of recovery are visible, and we are confident that this will bounce back sooner than we expect.”
