<p>It’s the month of December, and time to pack. The holiday season is in full bloom, but is the average Indian wanting to travel, after the economic shakeups of last month?<br /><br />On the evening of November 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced the move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from circulation, almost the entire nation grinded to a halt in a state of confusion and damage control. One of the noticeable trends that the demonetisation move unleashed was the urgent need to adopt a ‘cashless way of life’, heralding a digital economy where mobile wallets and debit and credit cards define one’s purchasing power.<br /><br />For a long time, the travel and tourism industry, owing to its diverse nature, has dabbled with various new-age innovations (digital maps, digital guides, etc.), in a bid to make the experience all the more easy and captivating for travellers. While cashless payments have been in the industry for a while, its need among those departing on a journey has become all the more pronounced in the last one-and-a-half months. Also, supporting this need, service providers and tour operators have been trying out different digital routes, wanting customers to keep coming.<br /><br />Powering the economic engine <br />The Indian Railways — the indispensable component of the country’s travel scene — carried 8.101 billion passengers in 2015-16. After the demonetisation announcement, scores of rail passengers were unable to find tickets due to the cash crunch. <br /><br />In the meantime, the government waived off service tax on those tickets booked through the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website, making them cheaper. This move, which is valid till the end of this month, is meant to incentivise cashless transactions through online-booking.<br /><br />If different aspects of the travel and tourism industry are observed, it can be seen that many players have been constantly evolving with the times, all in a bid to grow with a young, aware, discerning customer-base. At the same time, developing solutions for cashless, digital transactions has always been part of the fun.<br /><br />Aurvind Lama, the CEO and Co-founder of online bus ticket-booking platform Travelyaari, says, “Our backend system is quite large, and supports many operations. We have digitalised around 55% of the digital bus market, with the whole backend system powering transactions of 1.5 lakh tickets a day, of bus operators and OTAs, and across 8,000 agents.”<br /><br />“We are now trying to make our whole platform intelligent, working towards building smarter features into our system, such as dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, and analytics. We’ve also deployed wallets (in partnership with leading wallet players like Paytm and MobiKwik), which went live just before demonetisation. These wallets are different, since they can also be used offline,” he says, adding that in recent times, many transporters have shown interest to go completely cashless, wanting to use wallets, debit and credit cards. <br /><br />Holiday on the cards<br />Indeed, a lot of people would like to resume their holiday plans, even as the fears of having less cash lurk.<br /><br />Explaining holiday-going trends, post-demonetisation, HolidayIQ Founder and CEO Hari Nair says, “Immediately after the demonetisation was announced, there was a big drop in researching for holidays. We saw a 30% drop, but over a week later, it began to recover, and now it is roughly 10% below what it was before.”<br /><br />Attributing leisure travel to being the last item on any discretionary list, Nair says that whenever there comes a situation that affects spending, holidays may take a hit. “Secondly, the reality in India is that a portion of the unaccounted money is used to go to all kinds of discretionary spends like luxury goods, etc. A portion of that also goes to leisure travel. My reading is that the 10% drop we have seen is largely because that percentage was spending cash for holidays,” he adds.<br /><br />Being a digital company, HolidayIQ has supported a digital future for the industry. “The first part of the journey has everybody researching digitally. The next big part of the journey is about people transacting digitally. We are a beneficiary of both,” he tells DH.<br /><br />Holidays today could be entirely cashless. Increasingly, even local services available at destinations, be it restaurants or souvenir shops, accept cards. <br />About 15% of all hotel bookings happen online, which is much higher with airlines. Says Praveen Iyer, Vice President (Commercial — India Sales) at Jet Airways, “For the convenience of our passengers, we offer 19 cashless payment options, including debit and credit card payments, net banking, EMI options, and wallets, apart from the benefits of our JetPrivilege membership.”<br /><br />Sailing on rough waters<br />Even as various travel and tourism segments have seen some benefit in the cashless revolution, a few are experiencing some slowdown.<br /><br />The niche, yet popular cruise segment in India, sees around 130,000 passengers annually, translating to over $70 million in ticket value. Cruises are routed through a distribution channel, namely travel agents and tour operators, while cruise companies usually do not manage ancillaries, such as booking flights to the cruise departure destinations, and land packages. In the last couple of months, this sector has seen a slight slump in demand. <br /><br />TIRUN Travel Marketing, the exclusive India representative for Royal Caribbean Cruises, has seen a dip in interest, atypical at this time of the year. “We feel a dip of about 30% in terms of just the conversations we have with our partners and consumers. Usually, December is more of an enquiry month for us rather than a booking month. Most people would have planned their trips by now, especially to Southeast Asia. We would smoothly transition through this phase each year. But now due to demonetisation, we see a crunch,” says COO Varun Chadha.<br /><br />Necessity is the mother of invention! The travel industry in general is gearing up and rising to the occasion. Problems do persist, but the need of the hour has prompted different players to come out with their own innovations, go cashless, and to help surf this digital wave.<br /><br /> </p>
<p>It’s the month of December, and time to pack. The holiday season is in full bloom, but is the average Indian wanting to travel, after the economic shakeups of last month?<br /><br />On the evening of November 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced the move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from circulation, almost the entire nation grinded to a halt in a state of confusion and damage control. One of the noticeable trends that the demonetisation move unleashed was the urgent need to adopt a ‘cashless way of life’, heralding a digital economy where mobile wallets and debit and credit cards define one’s purchasing power.<br /><br />For a long time, the travel and tourism industry, owing to its diverse nature, has dabbled with various new-age innovations (digital maps, digital guides, etc.), in a bid to make the experience all the more easy and captivating for travellers. While cashless payments have been in the industry for a while, its need among those departing on a journey has become all the more pronounced in the last one-and-a-half months. Also, supporting this need, service providers and tour operators have been trying out different digital routes, wanting customers to keep coming.<br /><br />Powering the economic engine <br />The Indian Railways — the indispensable component of the country’s travel scene — carried 8.101 billion passengers in 2015-16. After the demonetisation announcement, scores of rail passengers were unable to find tickets due to the cash crunch. <br /><br />In the meantime, the government waived off service tax on those tickets booked through the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website, making them cheaper. This move, which is valid till the end of this month, is meant to incentivise cashless transactions through online-booking.<br /><br />If different aspects of the travel and tourism industry are observed, it can be seen that many players have been constantly evolving with the times, all in a bid to grow with a young, aware, discerning customer-base. At the same time, developing solutions for cashless, digital transactions has always been part of the fun.<br /><br />Aurvind Lama, the CEO and Co-founder of online bus ticket-booking platform Travelyaari, says, “Our backend system is quite large, and supports many operations. We have digitalised around 55% of the digital bus market, with the whole backend system powering transactions of 1.5 lakh tickets a day, of bus operators and OTAs, and across 8,000 agents.”<br /><br />“We are now trying to make our whole platform intelligent, working towards building smarter features into our system, such as dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, and analytics. We’ve also deployed wallets (in partnership with leading wallet players like Paytm and MobiKwik), which went live just before demonetisation. These wallets are different, since they can also be used offline,” he says, adding that in recent times, many transporters have shown interest to go completely cashless, wanting to use wallets, debit and credit cards. <br /><br />Holiday on the cards<br />Indeed, a lot of people would like to resume their holiday plans, even as the fears of having less cash lurk.<br /><br />Explaining holiday-going trends, post-demonetisation, HolidayIQ Founder and CEO Hari Nair says, “Immediately after the demonetisation was announced, there was a big drop in researching for holidays. We saw a 30% drop, but over a week later, it began to recover, and now it is roughly 10% below what it was before.”<br /><br />Attributing leisure travel to being the last item on any discretionary list, Nair says that whenever there comes a situation that affects spending, holidays may take a hit. “Secondly, the reality in India is that a portion of the unaccounted money is used to go to all kinds of discretionary spends like luxury goods, etc. A portion of that also goes to leisure travel. My reading is that the 10% drop we have seen is largely because that percentage was spending cash for holidays,” he adds.<br /><br />Being a digital company, HolidayIQ has supported a digital future for the industry. “The first part of the journey has everybody researching digitally. The next big part of the journey is about people transacting digitally. We are a beneficiary of both,” he tells DH.<br /><br />Holidays today could be entirely cashless. Increasingly, even local services available at destinations, be it restaurants or souvenir shops, accept cards. <br />About 15% of all hotel bookings happen online, which is much higher with airlines. Says Praveen Iyer, Vice President (Commercial — India Sales) at Jet Airways, “For the convenience of our passengers, we offer 19 cashless payment options, including debit and credit card payments, net banking, EMI options, and wallets, apart from the benefits of our JetPrivilege membership.”<br /><br />Sailing on rough waters<br />Even as various travel and tourism segments have seen some benefit in the cashless revolution, a few are experiencing some slowdown.<br /><br />The niche, yet popular cruise segment in India, sees around 130,000 passengers annually, translating to over $70 million in ticket value. Cruises are routed through a distribution channel, namely travel agents and tour operators, while cruise companies usually do not manage ancillaries, such as booking flights to the cruise departure destinations, and land packages. In the last couple of months, this sector has seen a slight slump in demand. <br /><br />TIRUN Travel Marketing, the exclusive India representative for Royal Caribbean Cruises, has seen a dip in interest, atypical at this time of the year. “We feel a dip of about 30% in terms of just the conversations we have with our partners and consumers. Usually, December is more of an enquiry month for us rather than a booking month. Most people would have planned their trips by now, especially to Southeast Asia. We would smoothly transition through this phase each year. But now due to demonetisation, we see a crunch,” says COO Varun Chadha.<br /><br />Necessity is the mother of invention! The travel industry in general is gearing up and rising to the occasion. Problems do persist, but the need of the hour has prompted different players to come out with their own innovations, go cashless, and to help surf this digital wave.<br /><br /> </p>
