Eco Slowdown & CAA Stir Hit Holiday Plans

The economic slowdown and the countrywide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act are taking a toll on the domestic travel and tourism sector in this high-octane Christmas-New Year period.

- Manu Kaushik

Travel-related bookings have gone down between 5 and 40 per cent across the country with metros like Delhi and Bengaluru being affected the most, industry estimates show.

There is a huge rise in cancellations for immediate travel. For instance, the current unrest in the North-East has led to a 20-23 per cent drop in month-on-month bookings. Similarly, bookings in December for travel to Delhi have fallen by 38 per cent over the previous year, says travel aggregator Ixigo.

The impact on demand has been felt in both business and leisure segments. While macroeconomic factors affect business destinations, leisure destinations show a greater sensitivity to factors like terror attacks, civil unrest, health-related travel warnings, etc. For the past couple of months, corporates have cut back on work-related travel spends and deferred travel schedules.

According to some estimates, an average corporate traveler takes over 150 flights a year. Due to slowdown, this number has come down drastically as the focus is to consolidate travel and plan in advance.

Leisure travellers, on the other hand, are rescheduling or shelving their travel plans largely on account of unrest caused by CAA.