 "Cricket fever to boost Indians travelling Down Under")
While some have reported 20-25 per cent surge in demand for travel enquiries to Down Under, others like Yatra claim that they have seen queries almost double compared to last year same period. Operators expect the demand to go up further in the next 30 to 60 days as the count down to the tournament begins.
The World Cup Cricket tournament has increased the visibility of the destination among Indian travellers who were planning a trip overseas. "The World Cup Cricket tournament in Australia and New Zealand has already increased the visibility of the destination amongst Indian travellers. The recent announcement of single visa for Indians travelling to Australia and New Zealand has given a fillip to travellers. The enquiries to conversion would be approximately 50 per cent," said Karan Anand-head, relationships, Cox & Kings Ltd.
More From This Section
He added, "The type of packages are typically 10-nights and 11-days type of itinerary where people travel to Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington and Christchurch. These are purely tourists who go there to soak in the excitement of the world cup." In fact, New Zealand Tourism has tied up with leading tour operators such as Cox & Kings to speed up the processing time for business visas to three working days. This will help more Indians to travel to New Zealand for the world cup.
Making the most of the opportunity, travel operators are offering match tickets along with some of the tour packages. Take for example, travel portal Yatra.com, which is offering ticket to one match with an eight day 'Cricket Extravaganza' package which comes at the cost of around Rs 1.9 lakh per person. "With a departure scheduled for February 10, this packages is seeing very good bookings," said Sharat Dhall, president of Yatra.com.
Operators feel that sports tourism, once a niche segment, is witnessing strong growth in the Indian context. "India being a cricket crazy nation holds strong allure for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. On account of this event, our bookings for New Zealand & Australia have gone up by 18-20 per cent. With most of our last minute travellers, we anticipate forward bookings to go up by another 15 per cent," said Shibani Phadkar, senior vice president & head - leisure travel outbound, products, contracting, operations & tour management, Thomas Cook (India).
Not just the Cricket World Cup, the recently concluded FIFA World Cup Football in Brazil 2014 had also seen keen interest amongst the Indian traveller. As Phadkar said, "With Brazil playing host to FIFA 2014, football aficionados and enthusiasts from India showcased strong interest not merely to witness this global event live, but equally to explore the diversity of Brazil and South America. With bookings to Brazil commencing as early as June-July 2013, for us at Thomas Cook India, we had seen a 20 per cent increase in queries."
Cox & Kings, which was the official travel agent for the FIFA World Cup had also seen a few hundred bookings for the same. "Cox & Kings was the official travel agent for the FIFA World Cup and we did clock a few hundred bookings even though the package costs were in the range of Rs 2 lakh and above," Anand informed.
However, cricket being a more popular sports in India, the demand for Australia and New Zealand trips is likely to be more. Even Australia Tourism is upbeat on attracting Indian cricketing enthusiasts during February and March. Nishant Kashikar, country manager, India & Gulf, Tourism Australia, "We expect 5,000-6,000 cricket enthusiasts from India to travel during the games. That's a minimum number we estimate basis feedback through the four official Indian travel agents Cutting Edge, TUI, Fanatic Sports and Sports Konnect who have rights to travel packages. The Tourism Forecasting Committee predicts 190,000 India visitors for 2014-15, a 6.4 per cent increase over a year ago."