The travel and tourism industry fared well after a short lull in November 2016, when there was a drop in bookings and many cancellations.

Shortly after the Post demonetisation announcement, most travel agencies saw a close to 50 per cent drop in bookings and 30 per cent cancellations, most of them inbound, due to the fear of shortage of currency.

According to Shravan Gupta, Executive Director - Leisure Businesses, FCM Travel Solutions India, the company saw close to 40 per cent loss in revenue in November. “There were no bookings for a few weeks,” he added.

In Tamil Nadu, November and December are busy months for tour operators, as people from the North come down to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry for temple tours. In Chennai, the impact was worse because of Cyclone Vardah that hit the city mid-December, coinciding with the annual music festival, which happens on a large scale in the city, drawing a huge crowd from India and abroad.

T Natarajan, Chief Executive Officer, GRT Hotels, said though demonetisation did not directly affect the hospitality industry, foreign guests were inconvenienced as it was difficult to exchange money.

Positive trends

But things have changed since. According to industry players, people, it took three-four months for the market to recover and for the cash crunch to ease. Most operators are now seeing an upswing in bookings.

Cash transactions too have come down. “Our cash transactions were usually in the range of 20 per cent. But post note ban it came down to 10 per cent,” Gupta of FCM added.

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