MUMBAI: The travel bug seems to be biting more Indians as a surge of 80 per cent was recorded in search for holiday destinations by Indians in the first half of 2016 compared to same period last year, a search engine study said.
"There is an overall year-on-year rise of 80 per cent in search for holiday destinations. While international destinations are still most searched, Skyscanner observed a marked increase of 11.89 per cent in the search for domestic destinations in H12016 compared to same period of 2015," global search engine Skyscanner said in a study.
Skyscanner has cumulated travel data of the last six months (from January to June 2016) to reveal insights in the travel pattern of Indians compared to 2015.
Further, it revealed that, within the scope of international destinations, the United States remained the most popular among Indian vacationers with searches gone up by 8.42 per cent in H1 2016 from same period of 2015, followed by UAE (4.83 per cent) and the United Kingdom (4.33 per cent).
"Indian traveller is now more informed and aware of their travel options. With the multitude of options and offers, we aim to track the change in travel choices in order to gain a better insight of the consumers, at large," Skyscanner India growth manager, Reshmi Roy said.
"Globally, we have more than 50 million monthly users and over 20 million app downloads, which puts us in a position to identify trends and travel patterns across regions successfully," Roy said.
A half yearly round up also gives an insight on how the year in travel has shaped up so far and gives an indication of what to expect in the year going forward, she added.
The study revealed that in the first half of 2016, there was an increase in travel planning with low cost carriers.
There was an yearly surge of 34.9 per cent, indicating a growing preference for budget airlines by Indian travellers, it added.
Full service flights have witnessed less year-on-year change since 2015, mostly because of an increase in cost-saving deals and offers by many low cost carriers that drew more customers, the study observed.
It also found that the most travelled month was May as it saw the maximum number of searches in 2016 so far.