Following a strong 2023, travel companies are cautiously hopeful about the following year, despite lackluster demand during India’s Christmas peak season, which is generally distinguished by heavy aircraft traffic.
Thomas Cook told Mint that it expects robust double-digit growth in the following year, although Booking.com is more cautious, noting the lack of large events to raise demand considerably.
According to the most recent official statistics, an estimated 125.5 million passengers flew from January to October, a 6% rise over the same time in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
“If we look at our forward bookings for the holiday season, we are already up 24% from a year ago especially when we look at domestic and short-haul international destinations. In leisure holiday business during summer holidays for next year, forward bookings are 64% higher than a year ago,” said Madhavan Menon, executive chairman, of Thomas Cook (India).
“As we move closer to holidays these bookings will pick up further, demand is still very strong, people are looking forward to traveling on holidays, I don’t think that trend has changed at all,” Menon added.
The travel sector had a solid rebound in demand during 2023, although there was a noteworthy drop in air traffic during the prime travel seasons of Diwali and Dusshera. High airfares have been mentioned as a key source of worry.
Before Diwali, which was celebrated on November 12, about 414,000 and 394,000 passengers traveled on November 10 and 11, respectively. However, post-festival numbers suggest a recovery, with daily air travelers topping 458,000, a 14% rise above daily averages before the epidemic.
“I think we will close 2023 on a positive note, for 2024 let’s wait and watch. This year, there have been many events spread across the year starting with Indian Premier League, G20, festive season combined with World Cup,” Santosh Kumar, country manager for India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Indonesia said.
“I have not heard of too many events for next year. For us, there is cautious optimism in terms of what 2024 holds. How long will people continue to pay (higher prices) is the question that is on everybody’s minds. At the moment we are not seeing that yet, even for the next few months, I am not seeing hotels drop prices yet, everybody is kind of in a wait-and-watch mode to see who kind of bells the cat first,” Kumar added.
While forecasts for 2024 vary, travel industry professionals notice a change in Indian travel preferences, with younger groups going less often and less seasonality in travel times.
“We have seen that the average age of travelers is now 8-10 years lower than we saw pre-covid. They don’t necessarily travel as a family of 4 or 6, they travel in a group of maybe 2-3 people. Also, earlier travel used to seasonal, right now we are not seeing any seasonality in travel periods,” Menon said.
From December to March, Thomas Cook reports an increase in European visitors selecting India and other Asian locations, perhaps owing to people avoiding areas near the Israel-Hamas conflict zone.
With 6.19 million international visitor visits in 2022, up from 1.52 million the previous year, there is cautious optimism for a recovery to pre-pandemic levels of around 11 million arrivals. While the sector is optimistic about organic growth, it is waiting to see whether these trends will continue into the new year.
“Inbound travel to India remains to be seen whether we will go up to 2019 levels…I would expect organic growth to continue but fingers crossed,” Kumar added.
