Rajesh Magow

Co-Founder & Group CEO, MakeMyTrip

“As the holiday season approaches, we are observing a steady and promising trend in travel bookings. In the domestic sector, there’s a focused interest in the leisure destinations. Top destinations include Goa, Rajasthan, Varanasi, Kerala, Manali, Ooty, Darjeeling, Coorg, Visakhapatnam, Pondicherry, Srinagar, Amritsar, Gangtok, and Rishikesh for the last week of December. There has been an increase in the number of room nights booked this year compared to last, despite the average 10% increase in fares, which is typical for this time of year.

On the international hotels front, traditional favorites like Thailand, Dubai, Singapore, and Bali continue to attract travelers, while destinations such as Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Istanbul are emerging as new favorites. Notably, there’s a trend towards booking more premium accommodations and higher room categories.

Regarding flight bookings, the most popular countries remain largely unchanged, with UAE, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Maldives, USA, Nepal, UK, Canada, and Vietnam leading the outbound destinations chart. However, we’re seeing a significant increase in travel to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Kazakhstan. A common factor among these destinations is the introduction or resumption of direct flights, coupled with the removal of visa-related barriers, except for Hong Kong. On the domestic flight front, the most popular leisure destinations travelled during the holiday period are Cochin, Srinagar, Goa & Bagdogra. Pilgrimage destinations like Shirdi and Tirupati are also popular for travel during the holiday period.

There has been considerable discussion about whether Indians are increasingly opting for visa-free destinations over traditional Indian leisure locations. We haven’t seen any data which corroborates this theory.

For both domestic and international travel, we see the contribution of solo bookings increase significantly and travelers are opting for an average of 6-day vacations.

Overall, the data indicates a positive outlook for the upcoming holiday season in both the domestic and international travel sectors.”