Gen Z to help India's travel spending expand 9% a year: McKinsey Report
India's strong GDP growth of over 6% a year will help push the annual growth in travel spending in the country to roughly 9%, a new McKinsey report released on Monday said.
With this growth, India's domestic travel market could overtake Japan and Mexico to become the world's fourth largest by 2030, as per the report titled 'The State of Tourism and Hospitality 2024'.
Domestic air passenger traffic in India is projected to double by 2030, buoyed in part by a state-subsidised initiative that aims to connect underserved domestic airports and has shifted the development focus away from major metropolises such as Mumbai and Delhi towards fast-developing smaller cities such as Chandigarh and Hyderabad.
After falling by 75% in 2020, travel is on its way to a full recovery by the end of 2024, the McKinsey & Company report said.
The report stated that despite longer travel distances between Asian countries, Asia's intraregional travel market is beginning to resemble Europe's. Intraregional travel currently accounts for about 60% of international trips in Asia, and it is expected to climb to 64% by 2030.
A survey of over 5,000 travellers revealed disparate desires, generational divides, and a newly emerging set of traveller archetypes, the report said.
Two-thirds (66%) of the travellers surveyed said they're more interested in travel now than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic. This pattern was across all surveyed age groups and nationalities.
Respondents also indicated that they are planning more trips in 2024
