RateGain Travel Technologies shared insights on the state of the travel and hospitality industry, as well as the impact of travel demand in India’s two major cities Delhi and Mumbai as international travel resumes on 27 March.
As per RateGain’s Analysis, except Hong Kong, China and Russia, all other major countries that contribute to tourism are showing higher bookings as compared to January 2022 when the world had briefly dealt with the Omicron Wave. It is expected that the news of Hong Kong opening its border for nine countries will positively impact recovery in the key Asian destination for business.
RateGain analyzed bookings over the last three months as well as compared bookings for the month of February to the previous year to understand if the industry is on track for recovery and a healthy 2022.
When compared to 2021, European countries of France, Italy, Spain, and Japan have shown the biggest improvement with almost 5X higher bookings as compared to the same period last year. They are followed by Germany, UK that are witnessing 110-150% increase in bookings.
India, Mexico, US, UAE are showing double digit growth as well as compared to last year. It should be noted that all four countries had already recovered to 70-80% of pre-pandemic levels in February of 2021 because of which the YoY growth seems lower.
India is looking to resume international travel next week after a period of two years, which will help in bringing back tourists, and help in direct as well as indirect job creation in a sector which has been a key contributor to the GDP of India.
To track the immediate impact of international travel, RateGain’s Demand-AI suggests that Demand in Delhi will increase by over 150% as compared to last year on April 2nd, 2022 which is the first weekend after International travel will resume. Similarly, Travel demand in Mumbai, will increase by 51% as compared to last year.
The increase is significant to note – as in 2021 this was the long Holi weekend and travel recovery was at all time high before the Delta wave hit India in April.
An emerging trend was also noticed across Cities in India, where bookings surged across cities in February as the COVID wave came down with cities like Jaipur, Ahemdabad, Aurangabad,Jammu, Bangalore, Delhi registering a 40-50% growth in bookings. However, cities like Mumbai, Goa, Mysore, Pondicherry lead the pack with MoM bookings increase between 70-90%.
