Thomas Cook India is expecting demand for forex to reach 90 per cent of pre-covid levels this year. While the forex demand from the education segment has already hit pre-covid levels, travel-related forex volumes is at 35-40 per cent of pre-covid levels.

Speaking to BusinessLine, Mahesh Iyer, Executive Director, and CEO, Thomas Cook India said that the company is inching closer to its pre-covid level volumes in the overall forex segment. He explained that given that the international travel was limited to air bubbles, and multiple geographies were shut, forex volumes through leisure travel was limited.

However, “Between October and December, part of the markets opened up, Mauritius, Maldives, Dubai we saw that travel-related forex came back. Travel-related forex is close to 35-40 per cent of the pre-pandemic level and it is in line with the industry level,” he said.

Nonetheless, he explained that thousands of students have continued to travel to other countries to study. During the pandemic, according to Iyer, educational forex and forex for families (remittances to and from family members in other countries) were the dominant segments in the company’s retail forex revenues. “Our educational segment is already ahead of what we used to do in 2019,” he said adding that he expects this segment to contribute in the same trajectory as it has in the past two years. 

Corporate segment

Speaking about the corporate segment, Iyer said that it has reached at least 50-60 per cent of its pre-covid levels mainly boosted by the IT sector. “We’ve had conversations with our top 50 corporate clients and all of them are back in the offices. They’ve also started to send their employees abroad for work.”

When asked about his expectations on the complete recovery in the forex segment, he said that as and when international travel opens up, there will be an uptick in travel. He believes that by the end of 2022, the company will see a recovery of close to 90 per cent of the forex exchange volumes of its pre-covid level. 

Bumper year

“2023 will be a bumper year because people will travel, people have been stranded for 24 months now so they will travel soon. My guess is that between 2023-2024 we will see a good growth rate.”

In order to make the most of this uptick, Iyer said that the company will focus on yields rather than focussing on just volumes. “The focus will be that while volumes will come, we should not lose sight of our margins.” 

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