Indians want to travel with family during Christmas-NY break; Dubai, Australia most-preferred destinations

NEW DELHI: No one likes to be alone during holidays, and same goes for the Christmas-New Year period.
Youngsters want to spend some quality time with family, and ring in the New Year with their near and dear ones.

In an email interaction with ET Online, Balu Ramachandran, Senior Vice President of Cleartrip, said that this year's winter travel is dominated by group and family bookings. "Winter travel has grown big for the metro as well as non-metro-based travellers this year," he quoted.

This year-end's holiday period has seen a major shift in booking trend amongst Indian travellers, and is bigger and better than last year. A Paytm Travel spokesperson confirmed that Indians are opting for international destinations this year during the Christmas-New Year season. Over 20 per cent increase was seen in bookings made for international travels on Paytm this year compared to last year. This period has seen bookings for international destinations such as Dubai, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo and Hong Kong.


Based on 2019's trend, the Cleartrip boss mentioned that year-end holiday period will be a peak travel season for Australia as it has emerged as a popular destination for Indian travellers this year. Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia have continued to show a strong booking trend as well, he mentioned.

As far as Indian destinations are concerned, Goa, Manali and Udaipur continue to attract a lot of travellers during this period. Bookings to religious places like Tirupati, Katra & Shirdi (by flight, bus and train) have also increased during the New Year period.

According to Paytm Travel, a significant number of Indians booked flight tickets for metro cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad for domestic travel, and then chose trains or buses to travel to nearby holiday destinations like Lonavala, Mahabaleshwar, Pondicherry, Coorg, Ooty and Nainital in India.

Ramachandran said that the fare prices have increased eight per cent since 2018 during this holiday season. "We expect the prices to increase further as the holidays approach," he added.