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After the long two-year pandemic, travel platforms are finally seeing a comeback in booking volumes. A MakeMyTrip spokesperson told BusinessLine that hotel bookings for the Good Friday/Baisakhi long weekend have surpassed December 2021 levels.
SoftBank-backed hospitality major OYO is also expecting booking volumes during the period to be its highest since the pandemic in 2020. OYO said it has received over 3.1 lakh bookings for the April 8–10 festive weekend (Navratri, Durga Puja and Ashtami), surpassing its New Year’s weekend volumes.
On MakeMyTrip, April 14 and 15 (Thursday and Friday) has the highest check-ins for hotels and homestays while for flights, April 15 and April 17 top the charts.
“Goa, Dehradun, and Jaipur are among the most preferred leisure destinations while in terms of customer traffic, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore emerged as the top Indian cities,” a MakeMyTrip spokesperson added.
MakeMyTrip is an online travel aggregator headquartered in Gurugram.
Weekend boost
Pankaj Parwanda, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of backpacker hostel brand goSTOPS, said, “Our booking volumes have grown by 25 per cent as compared to the previous weekend and 45 per cent as compared to weekdays. The preferred destinations for this weekend are Dehradun, Kasol, Mukteshwar, Mussoorie, Munnar and Nainital.”
Comparing the jump in weekend booking volumes to weekdays, OYO said it has observed a 134 per cent jump in weekend versus weekday bookings during the (April 8–10) weekend in 2022 as compared to the 111 per cent jump in 2019. The company attributed this boost to pent-up demand for travel and increased vaccination rates.
“Travel optimism is at an all time high across the country. As restrictions are eased and air travel bans lifted, travellers are looking forward to celebrating festivals with their loved ones, heading out on summer vacations and making the most of their long weekends. This surge during the festive weekend is a testament to the travel boom that’s ahead of us in 2022. Overall, this summer is set to be the season of pre-pandemic travel recovery,” said Shreerang Godbole, SVP – Product & Chief Service Officer, OYO.
As of March 31, 2021, OYO had a network of 157,000 hotel and home storefronts in more than 35 countries including India and those in Europe and Southeast Asia.
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