Published on : Monday, January 8, 2018
These days, many farmers and other people associated with agriculture roughly comprise around 27 percent of the tourists travelling overseas from Gujarat. Outbound travellers have grown from 4,000-5,000 a year around ten years back to 25,000 to 30,000 tourists per year now. Operators handle at least 180,000 to 200,000 outbound tourists from Gujarat every year.
Gujarat is not an exception. The UNWTO predicts that India will have 50 million outbound tourists by 2020. According to travel operators, currently around 25 million tourists from India travel abroad — the number would double within the next two years.
Outbound Travel from India is growing at 15-18 percent annually.
Not only the Indians are travelling to international destinations more than before, their average spending too is on the rise. Mohit Gupta, COO, MakeMyTrip said: “There has been a 3.7-times increase in the total spend of customers travelling to international destinations as compared to domestic destinations with more about 39 per cent more Indians traveling this winter as compared to 2016.”
International travel is no longer confined to the rich — the middle class is taking the plunge more often.
International budget airlines are offering cheaper fares and direct connectivity to overseas locations from tier II towns – for example, Thai Smile to Varanasi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and Gaya; Thai AirAsia to Trichy, Scoot (low-cost airline of Singapore Airlines) connecting Jaipur and Singapore, AirAsia from Bhubaneshwar to Kuala Lumpur.
Tags: India