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As the freedom to take longer holidays is slowly contracting, thanks to greater work pressure and difficulty in synchronising vacations with friends or family, a larger number of employed people are increasingly taking shorter breaks. Not only are shorter breaks more in number, they are mostly bound within certain regional proximity, claim industry analysts.
McKinsey’s report on India’s growing wealth pyramid reiterates this. According to the report, the exponential growth of India’s middle class and discretionary spends are largely fuelling the short-holiday opportunity. Customers are increasingly planning short-haul vacations to explore domestic destinations closer home and hence the increase in demand for regional destinations.
“Our sales teams at Thomas Cook India indicate an impressive growth of over 30-35% for short holidays,” says Shibani Phadkar, senior Vice President, Products & Operations, Leisure Travel (Outbound), Thomas Cook (India) Ltd.
There are additional facets that seem to be changing travel today. While family vacations used to take up a significant portion of the pie, it is slowly giving way to singles and couples.
“With the share of couple & single travellers growing, weekend getaways are becoming more popular than longer breaks. This trend will grow further in 2015,” says Hari Nair, Founder & CEO, HolidayIQ.com.
Traditionally, people have been travelling within a 200-300 km radius. However, a smaller but growing trend is also visible -- cross-regional domestic trips being foregone for a trip to some close Asian country.
Thomas Cook, for instance, launched 48 Hour Holidays, which promises an international holiday in under 48 hours, with most destinations offering visa-on-arrival.
“There’s greater demand for places like Singapore, Dubai, Thailand, Turkey which are accessible (by) an under 5-hour flight,” says Phadkar.
With short haul international holidays getting increasingly affordable, there’s a corresponding growth in hotel bookings. A 30-40% rise in bookings during long extended weekend is frequently witnessed.
Add the ‘brag factor’ of foreign travel and the role of social media and it clearly provides an impetus to the growth trajectory for long weekend holiday takers.
Additionally, the planning period of weekend travel is lesser than other types of travel. With weekend travel picking up, the average planning period has fallen to 30 days in 2013 from 46 in 2011.
“In 2015, holiday planning period will become less than a month,” says Nair.
Nikhil Ganju, Country Manager of TripAdvisor offers a different opinion.
“The time devoted to travel plans is increasing due to the fact that people are being inundated with information. With so much information to process on travel sites, the process of choosing a destination is getting longer,” says Ganju.
With fewer planned trips, increasing extended weekend getaways, and increasing disposable income, a cross-regional trip would cost in the same region as a quick trip to Bali. So would a person choose Kochi or Colombo, Bangkok or Gokarna?
Could this be the gradual decline of the pan-India traveller and localization of trips within regions? Nair offers a counter-argument.
“With transport options, domestic flights and buses, improving in terms of accessibility, affordability & frequency, there has been a spike in the number of domestic holidays planned which are more than 300km from the point of origin,” he counters.
Infrastructure is still a massive issue, though. Areas which would be a traveller’s delight are still a pain to reach.
“Hampi or Bandhavgarh, for instance, take more than 10 hours to reach. It’s worth the effort but imagine how better it would be if it were more accessible ,” points out Ganju.
The silver lining to all this is that localized travel and increased social media outreach has put lesser known destinations on the map. As travellers are getting seasoned, they are increasingly choosing offbeat places to go to and stay in.
