An Exclusive Overview of Indian Tourism:- www.deekpay.com

Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts as you may encounter some fact-filled bumps!

For us, travelling is an amalgamation of various human emotions that encompasses the feeling of longing for adventure, sense of purpose, fear, excitement and happiness. A famous quote goes like this, "Blessed are those who travel, for they will have adventures." Whatever your reason for travelling, booking round trips and hotel stays is an experience we've all been through. This in itself triggers many emotions: the nervous focus on fares so that tickets can be booked in a timely manner, as well as the anxiety and challenges of making impromptu bookings.

It's no wonder that the industries built around this experience are dynamic, ever-changing, and always ready to disrupt. It's the beauty of the experience that inspires all companies to revolutionise it.

The travel booking industry has come a long way. Remember the days when local travel agents dominated the market? Today, travellers can enjoy a wealth of options for prices and services offered by a variety of websites and apps. These options range from travel aggregators that combine flight and hotel bookings from different suppliers in one place, to specialist aggregators that only allow travellers to book train, coach or other types of tickets, to stand-alone websites from individual suppliers.

PayU is India's largest online payment gateway company that allows businesses to collect payments online. This has enabled PayU to take a close look at the evolution of the travel industry over the last few years. With its deep penetration in the industry, PayU has amassed a wealth of insights on traveller behaviour while booking a trip. The following is a revealing look at these insights and an interpretation of the way India travels. This covers data from major travel aggregators and the most popular independent supplier websites.PayU processes 70% of online travel transactions in India, giving diversity and accuracy to the data.

The trend of 'amount spent on bookings' and 'number of transactions' is increasing with each passing year. Despite all our plans, it is clear that Indians tend to be impromptu planners. In the last two quarters, there is a surge in travel bookings with the onset of festive seasons such as Diwali, Christmas and New Year. In August, for example, bookings are higher for both airline and non-airline businesses, as public holidays (Independence Day, etc.) and several festivals are approaching. Air/airline travellers are more likely to book tickets on the same day or the next day. For non-airline travellers, this increases to at least two days during the festive season.

Notably, non-air bookings rose in the last quarter. Last mile connectivity becomes important as Indians want to stay at home during the festive season and have good road and rail connectivity to major cities. The last two quarters also represent the season of long weekends and cold weather, which leads to a surge in travel bookings.

Obviously, the first quarter, which has no major holidays, is the exam season for children and is the closing quarter of the financial year, has the least amount of travel bookings. Moreover, bookings peak in the second quarter of the year when business travel bookings increase with the start of a new financial year for the company. So the next time you are planning a trip to Goa with friends in December or with your family during the summer holidays, make sure you book well in advance to avoid price spikes associated with ad-hoc bookings.

Another very interesting trend is when do Indian travellers finalise their travel plans? Is it during the daytime or is it a dominant and emerging trend for millennials to book their trips in the evening. Also, at what time of the week do Indian travellers start planning and booking for travel purposes?

Most travellers book their tickets online during the day between 9am and 6pm. There is a concentrated peak in the six-hour interval between 9am and 3pm.

This is either an indication that travellers tend to book from the office during the day or a wider trend that travel agents are still acting as aggregators to book tickets for their clients. This trend seems to persist for both airline and non-airline bookings.

So how did this trend develop over the course of the week? The data there also tends to support the above hypothesis:

As observed, most bookings occur mid-week and decrease as the weekend approaches.

Deep network of credit cards and wide distribution of debit cards ......

When we started looking at how Indian travellers choose to pay, some prominent trends began to emerge:

Indians mainly use credit cards (CC) to make payments. This is not surprising as airlines have many exclusive tie-ups with card issuers to offer co-branded cards. Most CC deals are incentivised by linking purchases to miles on specific airlines. But it also shows that Indians don't mind travelling on credit.

Debit card (DC) transactions provide an interesting mix. In terms of the number of transactions processed by debit cards, it actually exceeds the use of CCs. And the number of transactions shows a very interesting trend that Indian travellers are more willing to use debit cards for travelling. They are willing to spend more on credit card transactions, even though the volume of transactions there is lower.

Internet banking ranks third, but the number of transactions there is very close to the overall spend.

Another trend is that debit cards have a much lower ASV than credit cards for both airline and non-airline bookings. This is even lower than the average ASV trend for all transactions.

The trend of booking via credit cards remains high even among non-airline bookings. Debit cards stand out as an indication that it is not credit transactions that attract travellers. Rewards introduced by card issuers around credit cards are driving them to use them more than other types of bookings.

Indeed, for non-airline bookings, credit cards have the highest ASV (albeit with low penetration in this segment), suggesting that travellers perceive credit cards as a value proposition as a payment option.

Another interesting parameter is to observe when credit/debit/net banking transactions take significant market share.

It is clear that in the first quarter, credit cards had the largest share both in terms of the number of transactions and the amount actually spent through the PayU platform. And credit cards had the lowest share in the last quarter. We have seen earlier that in the last quarter, the growth trend for non-airline bookings was good. This shows that debit cards were the largest in terms of transaction share in the last quarter.

It shows:

People are willing to go home by any means possible during the holiday season.

The increase in low-cost transactions has increased the percentage of non-airline transactions using debit cards.

This trend can be seen in net banking transactions as well, which peaked in the last quarter of the year-end in terms of transaction value (in rupees).

So, a few points are very clear about the payment behaviour of Indians when it comes to travelling. Notably, these trends break a lot of misconceptions.

Do Indians shun credit? No, it doesn't seem so.

Do Indians book their own travel? Not really. Perhaps Indian customers need more education and trust building.

Indians follow very traditional customs while booking tickets during the week and during the day.

It will be interesting to see how traveller behaviour will change with the advent of new payment instruments such as UPI.

Will the convenience of payment methods expand the customer base for online services? Or will the use of online aggregators become more popular? Well, only time will tell as it moves steadily forward, but we will be here to watch the trends as the weeks and months pass, so stay tuned!

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