HYDERABAD: George J Xavier has decided not to travel to Kerala for Christmas this year. The techie, along with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, makes it a point to visit Kerala every year for Christmas. But this year the family has shelved their annual visit home owing to demonetisation.
“I don’t think it will be a good idea to go. The cash crisis in Kozikode is worse than here. Usually we book the flight tickets in the first week of December, but this time we didn’t,” said Xavier. “Christmas is celebrated with great gusto at our home. All our cousins come from different parts of the world. Those from the Middle East and US have also decided not to come. We asked them to wait till situation gets better in the country,” he added.
Xavier is not the only one to cancel his travel plans for Christmas and New Year due to demonetisation. Several travel and tourism operators operating out of the city have reported a considerable drop in sales.
“Our sales have dropped by 75 percent,” said Sayed Waseem, assistant managing director with Holiday Dreamz Travel and Tours. After demonetisation the number of air tickets and travel packages being booked have dropped. Only those who have to travel due to some emergency are booking with us now,” he added.
Transactions using card prove expensive for those travelling, said Sayed. “We have had customers who decided not to fly due to tax reasons that arose because of swiping their cards,” he added.
Airlines too are flying empty. “Most of the flights have slashed their prices by 20 pc,” said Sayed.
Rajiv Gandhi International airport had received 12,493,397 number of passenger footfalls (between April 2015 and March 2016). Of this 9,396,532 were domestic and 3,096,865 were international passengers. The figures were the highest the airport has ever seen since it began operations in 2002.
However, airport officials say there has been no considerable drop in passenger footfall.