Ahead of the presentation by ForwardKeys’ VP of Insights, Olivier Ponti at ITB India, here is a summary of the key air travel trends in and out of India. 

India continues to have the largest share of inbound travellers to the APAC region, at 24.4% of total arrivals in Q1 as of 11 March. Not a bad result when considering the air ticketing data from ForwardKeys shows that international arrivals in APAC in Q1 was down by 86%.

However, in terms of recovery India as a destination is performing at -59% vs 2019. The best performing region in APAC for on-the-books arrivals is Pakistan with a 0.2% increase vs the same period in 2019. The Maldives and Bangladesh are also showing strong signs of resilience.

Inbound and Outbound India travel picks up

After the discovery of the Omicron variant, tickets for both arrivals and departures in India dived, however, arrivals have now slowly been recovering back to pre-omicron levels and departures are not far behind, with figures for the week commencing 3 March at -19% and -58% vs 2019 for arrivals and departures.

The latest travel data reveals that the top international source markets to India are Australia (+15% versus 2019 levels), the USA (+10%) and Ireland (+4%).

 

Consumer interest and demand to India increase

In terms of travel intent, the ForwardKeys analysts have observed a shift, with the shares of flight searches increasing by 6% from the Americas and Europe from January to February 2022. In fact, the Americas hold the largest number of intent to fly to India at 42% in February!

This falls in line with the easing of travel restrictions from selected ‘Category A’ countries such as the USA, Canada, and EU member states on February 14. “Once again this simply highlights the importance of (or lack of) travel restrictions implemented by governments during this pandemic,” says Olivier Ponti.

Olivier Ponti, VP of Insights, shall present at ITB India (Virtual) starting April 5 – 7. Register to attend: https://www.itb-india.com/profile

RECEIVE THE ARTICLE
SIGN UP TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Share this, choose your platform!

Categories