August 31, Gurugram, India – Trevolution Group, the global travel industry leader operating Asaptickets, Skyluxtravel, Dreamport, and other travel brandsreports selling over 38,600 tickets to and from India in the first half of 2023, indicating a 65% growth across the market. This amounted to over 65 million USD, or nearly 10% of overall company’s gross bookings. Over the years, India has been one of the leading travel destinations for US customers, and the increased demand for affordable flights shows the growing potential this market holds across the traditional leisure tourism and visiting-friends-and-relatives (VFR) segments.

With travel volumes rapidly growing and exceeding pre-pandemic levels, India has emerged as one of the top destinations for Trevolution Group customers across the globe with a stable 38% growth in inbound travel. Compared to the same period last year, there has also been a significant 273% increase in outbound tourism from Indian airports, indicating this market’s stable recovery and rapidly growing demand for affordable international travel.

Class of travel
Economy is the ticket class that has increased the most in sales during the first six months of the year, resulting in 60% growth in flights from India and a 43% growth in tickets sold to India. Another cabin class that has shown a positive tendency in growing demand both among Indian travellers as well as globally is Premium Economy, thus indicating a growing demand for affordable comfort. While last year one in every five travelers going to India flew business class, in the first half of 2023, this number has dropped slightly to 15%. The number of business class passengers flying from India stayed stable – one in every ten customers last year chose to fly Business Class, while in 2022 this number was 15% of all travelers in 2022.

Booking window and terms

Meanwhile, the average price for a standard round-trip economy ticket, which has been the most popular ticket type, has stayed at the same level as last year, and in most cases, it was purchased one to three weeks in advance. That indicates the current trend of travelers still being more careful with planning their trips far ahead and rather selecting so-called last-minute offers that provide more security and flexibility. In addition to that, the number of short-term bookings from India has decreased in both 2023 and 2022, and thus the average length of stay abroad for customers is now 101 days vs. 92 days or three months in the same period last year which shows the tendency of people being confident with spending more time abroad now that the whole travel industry has recovered. Meanwhile, for travelers coming to India this period has been one month in the first half of the year both in 2022 and 2023 which is an average timeframe for international travel.

Destinations

Similarly, to last year, the most popular departure countries to reach India from have been the United States, Canada, as well as the United Kingdom, with three times more flights compared to the same period in 2022.

Mumbai and Delhi are the two most popular Indian airports, while most US passengers originated from New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Washington so far in 2023. Meanwhile, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have stood out as the top three destination countries for Indian customers. This trend is directly linked to Trevolution Group launching ticketing operations in the UK at the beginning of this year, where a large portion of the population is of Indian descent and represents the VFR segment.

Type of tickets

Hence, 83.5% of all tickets purchased to India were round-trip tickets, while the share of one-way tickets has stayed at nearly the same level and amounted to 16.5%, compared to 13.5% in 2022, which keeps increasing from 12% in 2019.

“Over the years, India has grown into one of the largest and most robust markets for Trevolution Group, and with travel volumes being back to pre-pandemic levels, we are proud to report a record performance across this region in the first six months of 2023.  Thanks to the significant demand for international travel between the United States and India, driven by Indian Americans and now also British Indians, we are actively focusing on expanding our operations, growing capacity and securing positions across these different markets globally. Indian carriers are expected to play an important role in the growth of international travel, and as more carriers add domestic and international capacity alongside aviation infrastructure upgrades, we aim to make affordable traveling even more accessible to our customers,” Peter Vazan, EVP of Industry Relations at Trevolution Group commented.

Trevolution Group incorporates the travel businesses of the Dyninno Group of companies, which provides products and services in the finance, travel, and entertainment sectors. Trevolution Group has established itself as the market leader in the travel business, specializing in the visiting friends and relatives’ segment. Over 730,000 airline tickets and vacation packages were sold by Trevolution Group in 2022, which makes it the fifth-largest travel consolidator in the US.

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