Desi tourists stingy, hard to please: MakeMyTrip survey

NEW DELHI: A survey of behavioural trends of Indian tourists who stay in hotels by a travel portal has found that Indian travellers are a hard lot to please. Of the 1,000 people who responded to the survey ,a large number of tourists said they avoid having meals in hotels because they find them priced too steep, while several said they replace, from outside, items consumed from the minibar. This, the survey said, emerged as a trend even though 90% of them said they preferred to relax inside hotels.

Highlighting the exacting nature of the Indian traveller, trends emerging from the fortnight-long survey of travel trends by MakeMyTrip showed that 80% of the travellers requested for early checkins, 75% for late checkouts, and 35% said they always request early check-in and late check-out. On one hand, while 59% Indians said they felt annoyed by “unsuitable“ breakfast timings, 48% said they felt annoyed because of loud neighbours, and 43% were irritated because of fellow travellers who were too fidgety . Indian tourists, it turns out, also emerged as tight-fisted when it came to tipping porters for carrying luggage to their rooms; only 39% said they always tip porters, while 14% said they never tip them. 47% said they tipped, but only sometimes.

Majority 82% of travellers said prices of edibles and drinks in rooms are very ex pensive, while 39% said they never consume any edible items in the room, and 55% consume it rarely .

At the time of checking out, 55% Indian travellers said they carry grooming kits, 38% said they carry dental kits, while 27% respondents said they take back tea bags and coffee sachets. Only 20% travellers said they do not take along anything from the room.

The MMT survey was conducted on about 1,000 tourists across metropolitan cities as well as smaller cities like Belgaum and Rajkot in October, 2017. A third of the respondents belonged to the age group of 25 to 34 years, while 23% belonged to the 35 to 44 year age bracket, while 20% respondents were above 55 years of age.The survey , which showed an increasing preference among tourists to book their hotel stays before embarking on holidays, also indicated that 11% respondents had to return from their destinations in the past, due to non-availability of hotel rooms when they had not been booked in advance.