Snow a spoiler, beaches favourite this year-end

NEW DELHI: Delhiites seem to have preferred beaches and seas to hills for their year-end trips. According to tour operators, travel bookings to places such as Kashmir, Shimla and Manali have reduced drastically due to excessive snowfall. After reports of 2,500 tourists having to be rescued from places around Rohtang Pass, most of the bookings for hill stations, including Himachal Pradesh, were cancelled, say travel agents.

"We began cancelling all bookings to places which are witnessing heavy snowfall. It is unfortunate but nobody wants to get stuck on the road or see other problems during holidays," said Chandrabhushan Srivastava, who runs Aditya Holidays. He said most of the domestic bookings for this season were for places like Goa and Kerala, where the weather is moderate. "In coastal places, there is very low possibility of your holiday time getting bungled up," added Srivastasva. In contrast, occupancy in hotels in Kashmir and Manali are at 20-30% against 80-90% for the same time last year.

After two months of summer holidays, the next peak tourism time is between December 10 and January 15 when travel agencies get maximum number of family bookings. Apart from domestic coastal destinations, a lot of bookings from Delhi are for Singapore and Bali. The reason for this is attractive flight and hotel options offered in these locations.

"A few airlines have announced tie-ups with hotels in Bali and Singapore and some of these combo packages are quite affordable—prices are equivalent to that of Kashmir holiday packages in peak season. We're booking maximum packages for these two destinations for tourists from Delhi," said Vikas Kapoor of Kapoor Holidays.