Compiled by Raynah Coutinho
The study, titled Winter Intelligence, is based on the holiday planning habits of its 5-million-odd-travellers-per-month audience across the winter travel months of November 2012 until February 2013. From where they’re travelling from, to where they’re travelling to, the time dedicated to travel-planning, length of stay, average spend and group size, here are the finer details to keep in mind in the coming months:
Studies earlier in the year have pointed to the fact that the budget and mid-market accommodation segments attract the highest number of online reservations and HolidayIQ’s study seems to reinforce this — among those surveyed, the average per-night spend on a (nearly) 3-days stay is Rs1,655. The average spend per trip is Rs4,485.
Where from and where to
The 24/7 Mumbaikar seems to top the list of break-takers in the country, with nearly 25,000 travellers emerging from the metropolis. Kolkata follows with nearly 20,000 travellers while the national capital ranks sixth, with 7,500 travellers. Ahmedabad sent out a little over 10,000 online bookers, Bangalore and Pune came neck-to-neck with about 12,000.
Whether driven by economic uncertainty or fears of Mayan prophecies or just plain devotion, pilgrimage destination Puri enjoyed the highest traffic among visitors to the website, seeing nearly 7,000 bookings according to HolidayIQ.
Conversely, beach paradise Andaman & Nicobar Islands saw only a little more than 3,000 bookings. But don’t read this as an aversion to sand and sea. Eternal favourite, Goa saw 5,000 bookings while Kerala saw nearly 7,000 bookings. Interestingly, Maharashtra tourism destination Mahabaleshwar saw nearly as many bookings as Andaman & Nicobar, as did the state’s increasingly popular beach destination — note that is not very far from Goa — Tarkarli.
2011 versus 2012
The good news is that group sizes and spend saw a marginal increase during the year gone by. Group size went from 4.35 to 4.71; spend (for the group) increased from Rs15,825 to Rs20,870 and this year’s Rs4,485 per person, per trip spend displays an increment over 2011’s Rs4,133. Similarly Rs1,655 per person, per night is a sizeable increase over Rs1,237 during 2011. Evidently, this section of the market is very open to absorbing higher room rates, within reasonable limits.
However, revenue and marketing managers designing packages might want to pay heed to the fact that the average trip length has gone from a little over three days (3.05 to be precise), to about two-and-a-half days (2.7 to be precise).
Also, if you’re looking to get a higher per person spend out of your target audience, put your offers out there well in advance .
Deep-pockets
You’re in luck if you’re located in Sikkim, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Kerala, or Rajasthan, all of which commanded an average spend of between Rs13,000 and Rs15,000 per person, per trip. Even better if you’re in Himachal Pradesh, which saw an average of Rs18,000 dedicated to travel there. As for those who invested in or plan to invest in Jammu & Kashmir, the average spend on a trip there is nearly Rs25,000. Keep in mind that this includes travel to and from the destination as well.
Smaller cities led HolidayIQ’s budget per person graphs. People from Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Agra and Vijaywada reportedly spent between Rs8,000 and Rs9,000 and travellers out of Dehradun spent over Rs10,000.
Babies boost budgets
In Hotelier India’s 2011 year-end special, the industry’s leading lights predicted the need for integrated family resorts across categories. True enough, HolidayIQ’s research seems to point to financial gain in enabling family bonding. Budgets for trips including children are 63 per cent higher.
Murud and Ratnagiri had about 20 per cent tourists coming with their kids, while Rajasthan and Kovalam saw about 22 per cent to 23 per cent and Bandipur National Park saw about 24 per cent of its audience bring their children along.
The cities that the maximum children-included family holidays are Jamnagar, Rajkot, Baroda, Surat and Aurangabad with anything between 18 per cent and 23 per cent of holidays out of these cities, including children.
Advance booking
Puri, Kanyakumari, Vishakapatnam, Andaman & Nicobar Islands (Havelock Island) and Allahabad are destinations that see tremendous advance planning — when travelling here, your guests in all likelihood, plan their trips over two months in advance.
Meanwhile, a destination like Harihareshwar, only sees movement planned about 15 days prior to travel. The same goes for Diveagar, Dharmasthala, Bordi and Kukke-Subrahmanya.
If your target audience is based in Varanasi or Jamshedpur, Allahabad, Kolkata or Durgapur, make sure you target them between their vital booking period that is about 57 to 70 days prior to travel.
Vadodara, Surat, Valsad and Rajkot residents book between 24 and 32 days prior to travel.
Interestingly, the more wary travellers are of a destination, the earlier they book. Since travellers are perhaps less used to travelling to India’s east and north east, they plan these trips 49 to 54 days in advance. With India’s west being fairly well-tread, trips here are planned only about a month (36 days) in advance, while trips to the north and south are planned about a month and a half in advance.
Money-minded metrokars
People from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai apparently spent less than their non-metro counterparts. While both groups (metro and non-metro) stayed for nearly the same amount of time, with nearly the same group size, the average spend of the former closed at Rs19,217 as compared to the latter’s Rs22,537. The average per-person budged was about Rs4,800 from metros and about Rs5,100 from non-metros. The average spend per night for people from metros was Rs1,546, whereas those from non-metros paid Rs1,579. People from metros plan 45 days in advance, while those from non-metros plan 40 days in advance.
Interestingly, 35 per cent of bookings that came from the non-metros had children included as compared to 29 per cent of those from metros.
Singles surging
It is a growing market according to the study. These travellers come mainly from metros, with Mumbai unsurprisingly topping the list, followed by Bangalore, Delhi and Pune. They apparently aren’t travelling on work either with God’s Own Country topping their list of hotspots, followed by several other leisure destinations: Goa, Ooty, Andaman & Nicobar and increasingly popular Coorg.
