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Thomas Cook India is seeing corporate travel surpassing pre-Covid levels in this quarter. The segment has already bounced back to 85-90 per cent of pre-Covid levels.
Indiver Rastogi, President & Group Head, Global Business Travel, Thomas Cook (India) said post Covid, the demand is picking up. “I’ve seen the migration of traffic from road to air very quickly. The routes are busy. Almost all flights are full. This is also mixed with leisure travel as well, but a lot of it is business travel.” he said.
He said that Thomas Cook India has reached at least 85-90 per cent volume of bookings in the corporate travel segment. “We only see numbers going up, and it is reaching pre-Covid levels,” He further said he is confident “it may shoot up higher (than pre-Covid levels) as well in this quarter.”
When asked whether the demand is domestic or international, he said the demand is currently driven by the domestic segment. Generally, Bombay and Delhi to-and-fro Bangalore, Bombay and Delhi to-and-fro Chennai, and Bombay and Delhi to-and-fro to Hyderabad.
International travel
Speaking about the international travel he said the demand is mainly driven by travel to the US or Canada. “We are looking at a lot of visa applications being filled right now, so in the next quarter, we are expecting a significant demand from international travel.”
According to Rastogi, the demand for both international and domestic corporate travel is coming from the IT and banking sectors.
During Covid, the travel industry was one of the most impacted industries globally. Even now, the costs of higher fuel prices and impacted trade relations along with inflation is impacting multiple industries globally.
Especially on leisure travel, hotels, airline and travel companies were offering significant discounts to get volumes unlike the business travel segment.
Rastogi said, “Margins remain as it is. Everything comes at a cost, everything is accounted for, nothing goes on the books.”
Speaking about the future of the business travel segment, he said, “We expect the next few months to see a lot of business travel will happen. We see a huge scalability opportunity in this segment.”
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