New trend: Tour operators start offering short-haul packages to cater to the long-weekend market

NEW DELHI: If fully booked hotels and heavy traffic on highways have somewhat spoiled your drive for making short trips in long weekends, then what about spending a weekend in, say, Seychelles, or for that matter, Greece?

Several tour operators have started offering short-haul packages for international destinations to cater to the long weekend market, which is growing significantly in the country as upwardly mobile, young Indian travellers now opt for two or three short breaks along with a long leisurely vacation in a year.

“The trend is here to stay since people are willing to spend anything between Rs 1-1.5 lakh per person for this kind of a short holiday, in addition to one long holiday a year,” said Keyur Joshi, co-founder and chief operating officer at travel portal MakeMyTrip.com.

According to both offline and online operators, 2014 was a bumper year for short-haul travel with 16 long weekends. This year, again, there are several three- and four-day weekends spread over the year for those working five days a week.
With the next long weekend around the corner in early March, many companies are offering packages to locales like Abu Dhabi, Seychelles, Oman and Uzbekistan, along with the usual favourites Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Dubai. Some other top emerging destinations include Shenzhen, Bali, Male, Bhutan, Greece and Cambodia.

India has emerged one of the largest outbound travel markets globally and there has been close to 21% growth in international travel last year alone, said Sanjay Bhasin, CEO at Goibibo.com. The portal reported 418% jump in travel to international leisure destinations on long weekends.

According to a report by the World Travel and Tourism Council, total expenditure of outbound travel in India grew 11% to Rs 835 billion last year from Rs 750 billion in 2013. Travel operator Cox & Kings said its long weekend business increased 30% last year and half of it came from outbound travel. Similarly, Yatra.com said international travel accounted for close to 40% of its festive weekend business last year.

Thomas Cook India has introduced a 48-hour travel package just to cater to this travel market, and it said its forward bookings for the 13-odd long weekends to come are up by 30%.

One of the main reasons for the rising popularity of international destinations is the poor connectivity of several domestic destinations along with bad roads. “Going to locations like Gangtok, for instance, requires you to reach the nearest airport in Bagdogra, about 124 kilometres away and sometimes people find it easier to just fly out to foreign countries,” said Joshi of MakeMy-Trip.

Seychelles, for instance, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, has a direct flight from Mumbai, and is a big hit with couples on such weekends. Even for smaller countries like the Philippines, India is an important market for leisure customers. The country has given Indians, along with Chinese, a visa on arrival facility to tap into a larger share of the pie. Currently, the Philippines gets close to one lakh Indian travellers a year and a majority of these are firsttime travellers.

Travel agency Flight Shop said the heavy traffic in long weekends is despite 8%-10% increase in average cost of holidays during such weekends.