Tag Archives: leisure

SriLankan Airlines announces “buy one get one free” offer to Indian travellers to Sri Lanka

SriLankan Airlines today announced a special “buy one and get one free” offer for Indian travellers to visit Sri Lanka in the months to come. The offer is valid for all the seating categories and is applicable to the bookings made for flights between India & Colombo for leisure travel. This offer will be valid on bookings made until 31st October 2021. TravelBiz Monitor reported on this on August 25.

This special offer has been timed with the recent announcement by the Government of Sri Lanka to reopen the island nation in promoting tourism sector under bio- bubble stay and travel procedure. Accordingly, Sri Lanka is welcoming fully vaccinated Indian tourists including Covaxin and there will be no quarantine for travellers who test Covid negative on arrival in Sri Lanka. One just needs to be fully vaccinated, with the second shot taken at least 14 days before the trip. A mandatory RT-PCR test will be conducted in the hotel and if anyone tests positive will be taken to health care centres run from hotels.

This special offer would enable the Indian leisure travellers to explore numerous attractions available in Sri Lanka after the country relaxed the travel regulations to the tourists. The discounted air tickets together with special incentives offered by the Sri Lankan industry partners would indeed influence Indian holidaymakers to choose Sri Lanka as the ideal & most easily accessible destination to travel.

From September 1, 2021, the airline will be resuming services between Colombo and the Indian points; Madurai, Tiruchirappalli, Trivandrum and Cochin with flights once a week, whilst Hyderabad and New Delhi will be connected to Colombo with twice-weekly flights. Further, the Airlines’ operations out of Chennai and Mumbai will expand up to five times a week whilst its Bangalore-Colombo services will be enhanced to flights three times a week.

Currently, India accounts for over 120 million fully vaccinated citizens, which can be a huge potential tourist segment for Sri Lanka. The “buy one and get one free” is expected to draw an impressive number of travellers from India to Sri Lanka at a time when global travel is still restricted.

OYO witnesses 34% increase in bookings for leisure destinatios during this Janmashtami weekend

As per OYO’s August 2021 booking data for 27th – 30th August 2021, the global travel technology company has witnessed a 34% surge in leisure travel across the country.

OYO’s booking trends reveal that Jaipur, Goa, Visakhapatnam, Kochi and Udaipur topped India’s most popular leisure destinations among travellers this long weekend. Majority of the demand stemmed from travellers based in the metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. Among business destinations, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Mumbai emerged as the most booked cities.

On the occasion of Janmashtami, OYO has also observed a surge in booking enquiries for religious destinations such as Mathura and Vrindavan, with majority bookings from travellers based in Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Agra, followed by Prayagraj and Patna. This indicates festive cheer brought in by the rising demand by pilgrims, who are keen to visit the historic temples of the city. OYO’s booking trends reveal that travellers opted for stays across OYO brands of Capital O, Collection O, OYO Townhouse, followed by homestays. With more people stepping out to spend quality time with friends and family, the company expects a similar increase in demand for alternative accommodation options such as cottages, homestays among others during the festive season of 2021. OYO also revealed that Indians are opting for shorter stays of 1-2 days. B

“Travel aspirations are growing and people are now looking forward to exploring exciting local hidden gems, either within the city or through roadtrips. In India, for the first upcoming long weekend of Janmashtami since the relaxation of restrictions, we have seen an uptick in demand for local travel, wherein consumers are choosing destinations closer to their location or heading to religious cities like Mathura and Vrindavan. We at OYO, have rolled out several COVID-19 appropriate protocols and initiatives such as VaccinAid, Contactless Check-ins, Sanitised Before Your Eyes to give travellers the confidence to stay comfortably and without any worries,” said Yatish Jain, VP & Chief Growth Officer, OYO INSEA.

Prasenjit Chakraborty, Assistant Editor, TravelBiz Monitor

Act Responsibly

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When we thought that India is gaining upper hand in its fight against Covid-19 at that time the virus is raising its ugly head again in states like Maharashtra, Kerala. This development has resulted in imposing fresh restrictions to contain the spread of new variants of the virus. In Maharashtra, lockdowns were imposed in select areas. Whether it is second wave or not, the damage is done to the tourism industry as people have started cancelling their scheduled visit. Few of my friends and relatives have cancelled their visits to Maharashtra and Goa which were curated carefully over a period. I am sure there are thousands of such examples all over the country. This has inflicted further damage to the sector (domestic), when business had just started gaining momentum.

There was a report which states that the new variant of virus led to a 35 per cent fall in sales in the last few days in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, Asia’s largest gold market. The fall in sales is because people are not venturing out. If this is the case for gold, we could imagine the impact on tourism industry. There is already a whisper in the industry-Are we going in 2020 way? Last year, exactly during the same time, the shadow of pandemic was looming large.

Besides Maharashtra and Kerala, new cases have been recorded from Punjab, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh. All these states are significant contributors to domestic tourism. We have to understand that in the current scenario, domestic market is the one and only hope for business. But the rising cases put a big question mark to the sector.

India is 17th among the most affected country by active cases. My intention is not to sound pessimistic, but to caution about possible consequences, if we don’t behave in a responsible way. Our irresponsible behaviour to a large extent is responsible for the current spike. Can we afford another lockdown? Can’t we learn lesson from 2020, which has just gone by? What is wrong in applying our brains so that we can live comfortably in the future?