Travel firms witness recovery in business as demand picks up

After a year of missed holidays, Indians are taking frequent breaks leading to faster recovery in business for travel firms. Both online and offline operators said that they are expecting February bookings to be around 65-70% of last year. This growth is being primarily driven by leisure travel as companies launch promotional campaigns and offer discounted packages to woo travellers. After running India Holiday Festival sale in January, Thomas Cook is back with customised packages for Valentine's Day weekend. "Given limited reopening of international borders, we have focused on the India domestic opportunity with encouraging results: domestic holidays business demand improved during Q3 FY21, with a 9X growth in sales over Q2 FY21. January 2021 has delivered a recovery of over 75% vs January 2020," said Rajeev Kale, president & country head – Holidays, MICE, Visa, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. MakeMyTrip and Goibibo have also pinned their recovery on leisure travel as long weekend getaways continue to attract bookings. According to MakeMyTrip's Q3 data, in the hotel segment, domestic room nights stay reached approximately 37% of the levels achieved a year ago, with December 2020 ending at approximately 45% recovery. Domestic passengers segments flown in Q3 recovered to over 47% of the levels achieved a year ago. During Q3, the number of bus seats sold on the platform were 50% versus the same period a year ago. Regions like Eastern India has witnessed recovery exceeding pre-pandemic levels by 25%. "While leisure travel demand has been leading recovery, we are encouraged to see early signs of recovery within the business travel segment, the recovery in small and medium enterprises (SME) segment is greater than corporates but both showing very encouraging signs of business recovery in step with increase in economic activity," said Rajesh Magow, co-founder & group CEO, MakeMyTrip Limited. Over the past six months, MakeMyTrip said that it has on-boarded more than 250 new mid-sized accounts on its platform. By December 2020, the overall air and hotel volumes booked through the SME focused program had exceeded 40% versus pre-covid levels. Meanwhile, Cleartrip said that booking volumes increased 30% q-o-q in Q3 which are sustaining even in this quarter. "We expect bookings this month to be around 65-70% of February last year. Leisure travel has driven the recovery, and we expect this trend to continue. However, business travel has also started reviving as seen by the return of sectors between Mumbai, New Delhi, and Bangalore in the top 10 routes," said Rajiv Subramanian, vice-president, Cleartrip. From a MICE (Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) perspective, Thomas Cook India said that it has managed over 67 virtual events and 17 physical events as of January 2021. "Our corporate travel business has issued over 85,000 tickets in 9M FY21. During Q3 FY21, the business issued 56,000 tickets Vs 23,000 in Q2 FY21 and 6,000 in Q1 FY21. Since the restart of corporate travel, the business has registered a revenue recovery of 14%," said Indiver Rastogi, president & group head - global business travel - Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. SOTC Travel, too, said that there has been a shift to virtual events and in the short-term, hybrid events are a preferred event format. "In addition to corporates in India, there has been a demand for Virtual Events from corporates based in the ASEAN countries," said SD Nandakumar, president & country head, B2B & Foreign Exchange, SOTC Travel.