Travellers opt for premium stays, hunt for value, and explore wider as early trends reflect India’s evolving travel behaviour
Preliminary trends from the first six days of MakeMyTrip’s inaugural ‘Travel Ka Muhurat’ (October 29- November 03) point to advance flight planning, wider destination discovery, and sustained preference for premium stays, all while travellers continue to seek value through deals and offers. Early bookings for year-end flights have doubled from a low base, serving as a good lead indicator for accommodation, where bookings traditionally follow in the subsequent phase. Premiumisation and category breadth remain the key highlights in accommodation.
On the domestic front, travellers booked flights across India during the six-day period. Interestingly, international flight bookings spanned 362 airports across 115 countries, serviced by 113 airlines. On the stays front, international accommodation bookings covered 7,911 unique properties across 834 cities in 109 countries, while domestically, travellers booked 40,038 unique properties across 1,441 Indian cities, including 603 properties that sold for the first time in over a year.
In the domestic hotels’ category, every third booking was for a 4- or 5-star property, a modest rise in average stay length from 1.7 to 1.8 nights. Internationally, 4 and 5 star stays accounted for 64.5% of bookings, with an average stay of 4.9 nights. Travellers upgraded to premium stays but remained value conscious, with 96% of domestic hotel bookers availing discount coupons, leveraging offers from partner banks including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank, and network partners Visa and RuPay.
Goa, Jaipur, Udaipur, and Lonavala emerged as the most booked domestic leisure hotel destinations. Internationally, Dubai, Pattaya, Bangkok, Phuket, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bali, London, Krabi, and Langkawi were among the most booked destinations.
Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder & Group CEO, MakeMyTrip, said, “It’s encouraging to see travellers engaging earlier in the planning cycle and making more considered choices. With Travel Ka Muhurat, our intent is to create a platform that benefits everyone in the ecosystem, travellers, partners, and the industry at large, by enabling better planning, more value, and more predictable demand. These early trends are a positive start toward that direction.”
Makemytrip
