How to plan your travel to save maximum money? Yatra’s Rakesh Kumar Rana answers

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Rakesh Kumar Rana, Head — Hotels, Partnership & Affiliate Business, Yatra, says as a golden principle I would suggest that one should book air tickets well in advance and with hotels please keep an eye for deals which are coming for early bookers as well as for last-minute bookers. If you follow that, travellers would be able to save a significant amount.You have been heading the hotel business at Yatra and you have all the data with you. I know that you are based out of Delhi but looking at the trends across India, start telling us which are some of the hot destinations that people have planned to go to this long weekend.Yes, the 15th August long weekend, which is a five day long weekend, is one of the biggest ones this year.

We saw around 3x demand and almost for all leisure destinations. For the primary destinations from each region, let us say, north, east, west, south, we are seeing a 3x demand and these popular destinations are always the first one to be preferred by a traveller from Delhi. For North, it can be Shimla, Jaipur, Agra, Mathura, Mussoorie, Nainital, Haridwar, Rishikesh and similarly from South it can be Ooty, Kodaikanal, Mysore, Kerala.

But what we are also witnessing this time is a very high demand for tier II or tier III or probably virgin destinations in each region and which is a pleasant welcome trend. So, in North, we are also seeing Patnitop and Bhimtal and Haldwani, Lansdowne, Parwanoo, Chaloli, Tehri to Kanatal are seeing a very high demand. Similarly in South, Trichy, Udupi, Hampi, Kottayam, Hassan and Guntur are also seeing very high demand.