Maldives and Europe travel on Punekars’ minds as countries open up for Indian tourists

With about 12 crore Indians being fully vaccinated in the country, travel is back on the mind for many. After about 18 months of being cooped up at home, travel enthusiasts are ready to pull all stops and head to international destinations to relax and rejuvenate. Since 2020 travel bucket-lists were never ticked, people want to make up for the loss in 2021. And with countries opening up for fully vaccinated people who have negative RT-PCR reports, leisure travel enquiries have gone up by more than 90 percent, compared to last year, according to the tour operators in the city. According to a survey conducted by InterMiles on 11,500 respondents across India, 65% people have planned leisure getaways, while 54% plan to travel to meet up family and friends. The same survey also listed reasons to travel as – relaxation, change of location, leaving behind the monotony of 2020 among others. Sarang Bhide, owner of Sarang Global Tours, conducted a survey among Punekars to see how ready they are for travelling. As per his findings, “65 percent people want to travel for leisure trips, while 26 percent were not so sure if they are ready to travel or not. Only 9 percent people exclusively said that they don’t want to travel right now,” he shares. Leisure and honeymoon travel top the list Since July, Maldives has been a destination that has its arms wide open for Indian tourists. Naturally, most of the bookings that tour operators are getting are for this destination. “Many people who got married amid the pandemic had missed out on their honeymoons last year due to travel restrictions. After taking both vaccine doses, most couples have been enquiring about honeymoon packages to Maldives. Almost 90 percent enquiries right now are for the nation of islands,” informs Arpit Khare, owner of Caravaan Holidays. After honeymooners, leisure travel enquiries for France, Dubai and Euro trips have been keeping the phones buzzing for travel agents. Owner of Aashapuri Holidays, Sujit Kotkar shares, “Safety and no unwanted restrictions are priority for tourists now. Even though we plan holidays for them, they do their research well and call us for packages to offbeat locations in Singapore, France and other places in Europe. Puneites are also looking to travel to Dubai for the upcoming expo, which is a huge attraction for shopping enthusiasts. Same time last year, we had little to almost no business, especially for international packages. But now, we are getting close to 50 enquiries a day.”