All roads lead to the US

TRAVEL The rising rupee is helping a growing number of Indians travel to the US

For 66-year-old Subramanium Srininvasan, a retired Hindustan Unilever executive who has travelled to South East Asia and Europe, a holiday in the US has been a long-cherished dream. Ans his dreams are about to come true.

He says: "I will finally be able to take that trip to the US with my family. In fact, everything has worked out perfectly. It is not as tough to get a US visa as we had imagined.The interview was a breeze and we got the visa within a month. We have also got air tickets to suit our budget and are looking forward to meeting friends and relatives who are living in the US."

Srininvasan is only one of the thousands of Indians who would be visiting the US this year. According to travel trade projections, most Indians will head to the US this summer.

With outbound travel showing strong growth over the past two years, the number of Indians who have booked themselves for organised tours to the US has also gone up by 40 per cent compared to last year. The trend will get stronger this year too.

The number of B1/B2 (business/tourism) visas has gone up by 79 per cent. According to information provided by the US Consulate, during October 2006 to September 07, the country issued 322,000 visas as compared with 180,000 visas in the same period in the past year.

The factors that have fuelled the growth and allowed tour operators to be bullish on the US sector are speedy issuance of the visas by the US, firming of the rupee vis-a-vis the dollar (firmed up by 15 per cent in the last two years) and an increase in passenger capacity on the sector by the national as well as international carriers.

"The speed at which US visas were issued increased substantially last year. This was because the embassy took proactive measures to clear the backlog. We now have a situation where if a traveller is to apply for a visa today, the interview dates would be given for the same week as compared with the time when they were given for three to four months later," said Arup Sen, executive director, Cox&Kings India Ltd.

Though some of the travellers to the US are first time holidaymakers, majority are evolved travellers who have visited Europe, South East Asia and Australia.

Software techies and BPO executives, who travel to the US on work, also lure a lot visiting friends and families tourists to travel to the US. Another category of travellers is of parents who have their children studying in the US.

Take for example Pradip Raychowdhry, a 55-year-old who has booked an 11-day holiday tour to the West coast. "I am looking forward to meeting my son who is studying medicine in Georgia, after the tour is over," he says.

"If the number of the leisure traveller is about 18 per cent, the visiting friends and families form 20 per cent of the bulk visiting the US," said Nishant Kashikar, head marketing, SOTC, adding that the number of travellers booked with them for this season has already quadrupled compared to last season's figures.

Addition of capacities and enhanced route network by airlines has also helped add to the numbers. All airlines put together fly 5,000 seats a day to the US including direct flights from India. "The US route is a high-load-factor route with almost consistent loads of about 80 per cent all year round," said an airline executive.

"In the last 12 to 18 months, there has been a three-fold increase in capacity on the India-US route due to a number of carriers starting non-stop flights with 20 non-stop services per week. Besides the Indian carriers, close to 30 per cent of the US-bound passenger traffic is also carried by West Asian and South East Asian airlines," said Sen.

But the firming of the rupee is not essentially going to translate into cheaper tours for Indians. What the tour operators would instead do is throw in some extras.

"An Indian vacationer is typically looking for a holiday with bits of everything.We would offer free Caribbean cruises or combine Alaska with free cruise to Bahamas for four nights and the like but not essentially bring the tariffs down," said Kashikar.

Another interesting reason that is drawing tourists to America is the South American appeal and destinations like Brazil and Argentina and also the popularity of Machu Peechu (Peru) after being declared the latest seventh wonder of the world.

It is estimated that a total of 30,178,69 Indians would have visited foreign locales (US excluded) by the end of this financial year. Travel to South East Asian countries has been steady and Europe is a third favourite destination (if UK is excluded).

The US would be elbowing out last year trends that were more towards Asia (attracting 59 per cent of the outbound travellers) with as many as 17,77,869 visitors thronging destinations of Malaysia, Singapore and Bangkok. UK attracted 26.5 per cent of the Indian holiday makers.

The exotic locales like Bali,Vietnam and West Asia still do not attract a formidable number as far as an Indian traveller is concerned. The projections for the total outbound tourist figures for various countries can be taken as an indicator as destination preferences.

Australia has not been able to create a thunder as only 90,000 tourists would be visiting Australia till March this year, as compared to 83,700 last year. Overnights for Switzerland have increased marginally to 350,000 over 290,000 over last year.

The projections remain buoyant for the next year as well. "US is going to be our key destination for the year 2009," said Deepak Kalra, CEO, makemytrip.com.