Survey reveals online travel searches done more in Mumbai

Among Indian cities, Mumbai leads in online travel searches and Gujarat ranks the lowest with just 2.36 per cent of people searching for tour destinations, finds a new survey report.

MyTourReview, which is a review platform for tour operators for holiday habits of Indian consumers for the year 2016, conducted survey which shows that online travel searches are a lead in Mumbai where 11.6 per cent of people search for travel destinations, tour packages and make online enquiries.

Bangalore (10.38 per cent), Hyderabad (9.98 per cent), Chennai (9.40 per cent), New Delhi (5.79 per cent) Lucknow (5.76 per cent) Pune (5.64 per cent) and Kochi (5.46 per cent) are the other cities where people are making their travel choices online.

“Statewise, Maharashtra (19.48 per cent) topped the list followed by Karnataka (12.38 per cent), Telengana (10.98 per cent) and Delhi (10.56 per cent) and Gujarat ranked the lowest with just 2.36 per cent of online travel searches,” it said.

The survey included 3,300 users. It shows that 75 per cent of honeymoon trips were booked online while 73 per cent of people booked package holidays.

Around 36 per cent of volunteers reported they choose their destinations for travel inspired by pictures posted on Facebook or Instagram by friends.

A majority of them told that they preferred portals such as TripAdvisor and MyTourReview, and recommendations from travel companies for reviews to choose hotels.

MyTourReview features more than 700 tour operators across the world and has reviews from tens of thousands of users.

The Association of Tourism Trade Organisations India (ATTOI), which created the MyTourReview platform exclusively for customer reviews for tour operators, says the survey response shows how important it is for travel businesses to maintain online visibility, carry out digital branding and engage with customers on social media networks.

“Conventional tour operators, especially in India, may think online customer reviews and ratings or being present on the internet is secondary to their business, but they need to realise the impact that digital platforms are having on the decisions Indians make on holiday travel,” said ATTOI President Anish Kumar P K.

“If your website does not show up in Google searches, if you are not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or responding to customer reviews on TripAdvisor and MyTourReview, you may be losing out on large volumes of business,” he said. 

(With PTI inputs)