Fliers to and from Bangalore appears to have grabbed big discounts offered by various airlines in the past couple of days, with bookings witnessing a surge of up to 817 per cent compared to discount-free days.

Bangalore-Delhi, Delhi-Bangalore, Bangalore-Kolkata, Kolkata-Bangalore and Bangalore-Mumbai routes were in the top 10 sectors which attracted the most bookings since January 21, when airlines started offering huge discounts to attract fliers in the lean season.

Sharat Dhall, president of travel portal Yatra.com, said the discounted airfares have brought cheer to the traveller and the bookings have increased by almost four to five times. “With the onset of summer vacations by the end of March, we have seen significantly higher traction from south India as travellers are taking advantage of these lucrative prices to book their holidays in advance,” Dhall said.

According to the portal, the bookings for the Bangalore-Delhi flights on January 21 rose by 800 per cent while it rose by 817 per cent the next day and 626 per cent on Thursday, compared to January 20 when there was no discount.

On the Bangalore-Kolkata route, the rise in bookings in these three days was 753, 680 and 547 per cent respectively. However, the Bangalore-Mumbai route did not see such enthusiasm though it had bookings to the tune of 133, 233 and 267 per cent in the three days compared to January 20.

Another portal “MakemyTrip” also said bookings for the Bangalore-Delhi route increased by 800 per cent while the Delhi-Mumbai route grew 400 per cent.

The portal said the Delhi-Mumbai route was the top selling route during the no-discount period but the Bangalore-Delhi and Delhi-Bangalore route pushed it to the third spot in the past three days. The other hotspot routes in the past three days were the Pune-Delhi, Bangalore-Mumbai, Delhi-Pune, Mumbai-Bangalore, Bangalore-Kolkata and Delhi-Hyderabad routes.

“The visitor traffic to our website went up four times on Thursday, which was the busiest day of the sale period. We expect the momentum to continue for the next couple of days as well.  We saw maximum bookings of 22 per cent coming in from Delhi followed by 17 per cent bookings from Mumbai and 13 per cent from Bangalore,” Rajesh Magow, co-founder and CEO-India of MakeMyTrip, said.

An analysis of the figures of Yatra.com showed the bookings for the Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Delhi flights increased between 296 per cent and 520 per cent during the past three days. The increase was higher in Delhi-Mumbai route compared to Mumbai-Delhi.

The bookings for travel between Delhi and Pune and vice versa also had huge bookings ranging between 287 per cent and 471 per cent. The Chennai-Delhi route witnessed a 461 per cent increase on Thursday while it was 389 and 278 per cent on Wednesday and Tuesday respectively.