Indian travellers booked 52% more trips in July-December 2016 than in 2015: Makemytrip

Mumbai: Indian travellers booked 52% more trips in July-December 2016 than the same period last year, according to a report compiled by Makemytrip, India's biggest online travel portal.

"A major trend observed is that Indian travelers have now become increasingly younger with 17% being in 18-24 year age group compared to 12% last year. Smartphone penetration and adoption led by the young travelers is driving shift from offline to online in the travel industry with repeat individual travel on the rise. 57% more customers travelled in the second half of 2016 as compared to the same time period in 2015 with 56% of all customers using the app for all their bookings; witnessing an almost 1.7x (or 1.7 times) growth from 33% last year," the portal said in a statement.

There was a surge in last-minute bookings too, showing Indians still don't plan their trips well in advance. About 81% of domestic bookings happened within a month and 36% of international bookings were done within a week of travel.

Hotel transactions saw a 145% rise with the highest growth seen in the budget category hotels while the 3-star hotel category accounted for the highest transactions in terms of volumes, said the report.

International hotel transactions witnessed a rise of 59% with half of the bookings being done in the 4/5-star category. The 3-star category saw the highest growth.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.