Quick getaways, spiritual quests fuel India's tourism: Booking.com's Houldsworth

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NEW DELHI : India's travel and tourism sector is seeing robust growth, propelled by an increasing appetite for frequent and shorter trips, said Laura Houldsworth, Asia Pacific managing director for Booking.com. In a recent interview with Mint, shesaid this surge is not only fueled by expanding spiritual and wedding tourism but also by a strong outbound travel market. "We're expecting Indians to want to travel more frequently and take a lot of shorter trips as well, unlike the one to two trips we saw in the past," Houldsworth said.

Indians took about 2.3 billion trips in 2019, which is estimated to rise to about 5 billion by 2030, the company had said earlier. She said the rise in cultural and religious exploration, particularly in India's tier-two and three cities, is driving domestic inbound travel. The trend towards more frequent and shorter trips represents a marked departure from the past, with emerging travel destinations like Varanasi, Kochi, and Mysore gaining popularity among travelers from metropolitan areas, she said.

"As more branded properties come into these locations, we will continue to see inbound travel increase too," she added. Ooty, Srinagar, Manali, Darjeeling and Goa were among the most searched leisure destinations for Indians travelling domestically from 15 April to 15 July, as per Booking.com. The company has a list of over 70,000 properties on its platform in India and a third of the bookings being made are for alternative accommodations.