Summer & reviving economy give Indians travel incentive

The city's sweltering heat and the receding economic woes engulfing the economy are encouraging an increasing number of Indian tourists, along with their families, to go on vacation to foreign locales this year. And in a bid to attract these tourists, many countries too, are now offering innovative travel packages.

According to Rajinder Rai, president of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), an apex body of tour operators in India, the industry expects at least 15 per cent increase in the number of people travelling abroad this season as compared to the year- ago period. "One of the advantages with Indians is that they are not really 'advance bookers'. They prefer to plan just a week or 10 days in advance. So issues like airline strikes do not affect them much," he said.

Rai said many countries this year has come out with many initiatives to attract Indian travelers. "Like the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) that is trying hard to boost its image and increase the number of tourists coming to their country despite the unrest," he said.

Thailand has taken steps to ensure that tourists are covered by medical insurance. The free visitor insurance scheme provides cover of up to $30,000 in cases of disastrous events until the end of March, 2011. The country has also waived off tourist visa fees till March, 2011. In 2009, Thailand had 40 million tourists and earned $16 billion in tourism revenue. Other destinations, such as Mauritius are offering visas on arrival to attract more tourists.

According to Rai, the Chinese government too, has tied up with TAAI to promote the inflow of Indian tourists into their country. "China too, is keen on promoting their Shanghai World Expo, which would be going on for six months till October 31, 2010. Turkey is another country, which is promoting its capital Istanbul in a big way," he said, adding other favourite travel destinations include Egypt in the short- travel stay category. "UK continues to be one of the favourite tourist destinations followed by the US," he pointed out.

With the threat of LTTE eliminated, Sri Lanka is attracting visitors, particularly from India. Besides the sun, sand and sea the new attractions of Sri Lanka include Ayurveda and adventure.

According to the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, tourism figures in the first quarter have doubled in comparison to last year, with nearly 16 per cent of it being tourist arrivals from India. The Sri Lankan government is also planning to set up 50,000 hotel rooms to accommodate 1.5 million tourists by the year 2011. At present the country has around 14,500 hotel rooms.

According to a study conducted by American Express, international passenger traffic in India is expected to keep rising on the back of a 24 per cent rise in spending on travel during January- March, 2010 over the year- ago period.

Karan Anand, head- relationships and supplier management, Cox and Kings said that industry- wise last year about 10 million Indians travelled overseas. "We believe we will surpass this number this year by at least 30 per cent," he said.

Reacting to the ongoing issues like the British Airways strike in the UK and the continued volcanic ash crisis, Anand said currently Indian travellers can fly directly by Air India, Jet and Kingfisher to like the UK. "There would not be any impact. The European airspace is being closed in a few areas but it has not affected the main routes," he said