How travel experts in India can capitalize on the new wave of travel post Covid

Recently I went on a trip to a small town near a hill station — Nainital, quite cold and rejuvenating given the COVID scenario in recent months. This trip was with family including cousins. We stayed at a farm stay with the family as hosts who cooked for us and took us farming, trekking and jungle walks within their vast compound of 100 acres. Quite different from the usual tourist hotspots and the local markets that I am accustomed to while on family trips.

Surprisingly enough, even my folks who were very skeptical of this off-beat travel experience loved it. They are sold on this form of travel and have been gushing about it to other folks..

Source: Unsplash, Abin

So this got me thinking..

What has been holding the older generation back from such off-beat experiences?

Can I extrapolate the experience of my family and assume it to be a harbinger of things to come?

Does this mean that an entire generation with their own savings and earning children become the new target audience segment for certain travel firms. If yes, how do they go about it and what are the implications?

Let’s back up a little..

Growing up, the winter and summer breaks were mostly to places where we had relatives, mostly my nani (maternal grandmother). It was basically one home to another and focused on relationships. The idea of a pure vacation was not there. It only came about in certain circumstances, for example, when a tourist town is near your relatives place, mostly driving distance, so you would go there.

Later on, the vacations expanded with the concept of outstation marriages taking place. So you end up visiting the tourist town as well, where the wedding is taking place.

In both the above circumstances, your vacation was limited to a couple of famous spots and visiting the market where your mom held ground advantage.

The why…

The why of it seems to be lack of disposable income and lack of a societal construct where vacations are considered important and rejuvenating. Also, as a country, India lacked the infrastructure for promoting travel. Infact, as a country we still hardly advertise ourselves as tourist destinations barring a couple of states like Kerela and Gujarat.

Changes are afoot…

Now, times are changing. While there are multiple factors that have kick-started tourism in the country such as infrastructure and so on, we will look at how increase in disposable income has brought about a sea change in the societal construct around the idea of tourism.

We will look at this from the perspective of people in the tourism industry whose businesses have suffered due to on-going COVID. The goal is to induce some thinking in order to re-calibrate their new offerings.

Increasing demand for off-beat travel

• Disposable income is increasing in the country with an increasing number of earning members per household. This increases the propensity to spend on discretionary habits including travel.
• The concept of travel in itself is changing among the younger generation, who have disposable income in their hands. While travel earlier was limited to famous tourist spots and local markets with family, it is increasing its scope to other forms such as culture tourism, agri-tourism, etc wherein you soak in the lifestyles of the place that you are visiting rather than making a cursory visit to the famous spots. This is driven by their exposure to travel experiences in Western nations via social media networks.
• Rejuvenation as an end goal of travel might have been there earlier, but was mostly on a subconscious level where no one spoke about it. Now it has entered the lexicon of travellers, who go all out to seek it via their travel experiences.

Source: UnSplash, Joshua Earle

Supplying to the new-age traveller…

All these factors have led to a demand for a new type of traveller — someone seeking alternate forms of travel with clear end goals in mind.

Given the current nature of supply in the tourism industry, you are mostly left with hotels to choose from. AirBnB comes to the rescue here, where people could seek alternate tourism spots along with cheaper ways to travel and immerse themselves in the local culture and ways of living.

But this form of off-beat travel had its limited TG. While we as a younger generation are more comfortable with seeking off-beat locations, our parents are just not. They would still prefer the hotels, the famous tourist spots and the local markets.

The very idea of just sitting in the lap of nature and doing nothing does not agree with them. That is just being plain lazy!! ‘You are on a holiday, you need to be going out and doing something, not just sitting idle.’ So while the idea of vacations was growing, it was more about domestic and international hotspots.

COVID comes calling…

But then came COVID, which has upended lives and will continue to do so for decades if not generations. All of a sudden, you cannot visit the tourist hotspots, you have to find places where there were less people, where the environment was much safe in terms of health and where you could rejuvenate mentally after months of lockdown. Mental stress had come to the fore!! People just needed a way out.

And all these factors applied to all generations, no one was spared!! You could be a kid, a teenager, an adult or someone in their prime — safety while travel became of prime importance. Thus opening entire new audiences and new avenues for the tourism sector in India.

Source: Unsplash, Alenka

So what do you as a travel expert do now? (This is assuming that you run a travel company, have a set base of clients whom you have catered to in the past and who trust you)

• You can build supply which is relatively the more difficult path for you, but you can leverage existing platforms such as AirBnB, MakeMyTrip and Bookings.com and get the top 15–20 off-beat places based on a niche category to begin with. For example, you want to target people in the organic farming tourism category, you build a network of such farm stays who can be pitched to your clients.
• You are relatively sorted on the demand side. You have a list of clients who trust you and are more than willing to let off steam albeit in a healthy and safe environment. You introduce the new concept to them. While earlier, such locations would have been a difficult sell to the older generation, the safety angle would net them in. Also, the TRUST factor would help in the sell. They don’t trust listings on AirBnB, but they trust their tour guy whom they know in person. It is pretty much like COD for e-commerce.
• Indians as travellers are used to being treated lavishly while on trips. They check into hotels where waiters are at their beck and command. Here it is not like that, you are more likely to be living with another family who are opening their doors to you. Therefore you need to sensitise and train them about how these trips are relatively different from other trips.

Are you replicating AirBnB..

Pretty much Yes…but on a smaller scale. Right now, people of the new target segment are hardly even aware of AirBnb, let alone being comfortable with it. Your task therefore is to leverage AirBnB’s scale, find limited properties for your audience and sell that trust that you have built over the years.

While it is quite possible that they will move on to AirBnB in the long term, a small clientele with an ever increasing demand for exclusivity and travel needs will stick around with you for the long run.

Happy travelling!!

P.S. This is the link to the the farm stay. Do check it out, the stay was amazing and the hosts were great.