As international travel opens up, Indians are spending lavishly | Business and Business News
India expects local traffic to surpass pre-pandemic levels of 415,000 daily fliers within a year.
Through Bloomberg
Released March 28, 2022
According to the South Asian nation’s second-largest online travel agency, Indians are now taking lavish vacations, spending more on five-star hotels and booking business-class seats as the country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic that curtailed travel for two years.
“People live their lives and spend a lot of money on travel,” Prashant Pitti, co-founder of EaseMyTrip, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday. “It’s a change that’s happening forever and for the long term.”
More Indians are taking to the skies as travel restrictions ease and the country opens up to international travel, with pent demand fueling the travel needs of millions stuck at home. India, the world’s fastest-growing major aviation market before the pandemic, expects local traffic to surpass pre-pandemic levels of 415,000 passengers per day within a year. Indian airlines are also expanding capacity to catch the revival in demand as international flights resume from Sunday.
Bookings for business class seats on flights and five-star hotels have already doubled compared to pre-pandemic numbers as a percentage of total reservations, Pitti said. Indians now plan an average of 4.7 days of vacation, compared with 3.2 days before Covid, he said. EaseMyTrip is operated by Easy Trip Planners Ltd. operates and offers online bookings for flights, trains, hotels, buses and taxis.
EaseMyTrip, which sold shares to the public last year, will continue to grow profitably, Pitti said. The company’s net profit is likely to have exceeded 9 billion rupees (US$118 million) for the year ended March 31, up from 6.1 billion rupees (US$80 million) a year earlier, he said.
While airfares have risen “rather dramatically” in recent weeks as airlines attempted to offset a rise in oil prices, the surge will be short-lived, Pitti said.
“India is looking great and is poised to recover very quickly from the onslaught we’ve all been through in the last two years,” he said. “The pent-up demand will not decrease in the next few years.”
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