Road trips take off this summer

The fear of a fourth wave and lack of international destinations to fly to are driving the demand among Bengalureans, say cab aggregators

The demand for outstation road trips for leisure has recuperated significantly this summer, say taxi service providers from Bengaluru. Lockdowns had brought the mid-year travel in 2020 and 2021 to a grinding halt, they compare.

Young Bengalureans are travelling to the usual, cooler climes — Nandi Hills, Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu in Karnataka, Ooty and Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, and Wayanad and Munnar in Kerala. Beach getaways like Goa and Puducherry remain popular. Families with elderly members are heading to temple towns like Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.

Desperation to travel

Bengaluru is the highest revenue generator for Savaari Car Rentals, an online cab booking aggregator. The city drives one-fourth of its business. “From the Dasara-Diwali season to mid-January this year, we had reached 80%-85% of the pre-pandemic numbers. Bengaluru has rebounded the most,” Anand Dorairaj, VP and head of growth, talks of the city’s appetite for travelling, which, he says, is led by a young, working population with fewer family commitments.

There is high demand for May and that could be out of “the desperation to finish travelling before the fourth wave hits”, he suspects. The desperation is leading to overcrowding on the hills, so his team is recommending worthy but lesser-explored spots nearby. Domestic travel by flights has also shot up and one would expect it to eat into the road trip business. Anand suggests otherwise: “The aviation industry is complementary to our business — 33% of our bookings are airport pickups.”

Few foreign trip options

Sandeep Gambhir, MD and CEO of Orix India, which runs the self-drive car rental vertical MyChoize, says their demand for leisure and family travel is at an all-time high and the average trip duration has gone up from two days to at least three or four.

“International travel is missing because common destinations have still not fully opened up. This has led to a push for domestic travel. Within that, road trips have gone up, the air travel not as much,” he talks of the trend. Soon after the first lockdown, it was reported that people were preferring cars over public transport to avoid the crowd.

RideAlly, a cab booking app, is also going strong. “We are doing 200-plus outstation trips from Bengaluru every month,” says operation manager Krishnakumar C.

Unlike these tech-enabled platforms, two local tours companies said the demand is still lukewarm.

Battling fuel price hike

A Bengaluru-based cab rental company, which did not want to be identified, says the fuel price hike has put them in a tight spot just when they were on the path to recovery. One of its directors explains, “People usually book the cabs a month in advance. A four-day round trip to Ooty cost Rs 11,000 in March. Now it costs Rs 12,500. But we can’t ask these customers to pay this cost of difference nor can we ask the drivers to subsidise it. We are bearing that loss.”

Driver Santosh says his travel company has increased the outstation fare from Rs 10 to Rs 10.50 per km for an hour since March. “The increase is too less but what to do? Customers will start complaining if they raise further,” he says of the diesel price, which has risen from Rs 85.01 to Rs 94.79 in a month. Likewise, Savaari Car Rentals revised its fares by 10% early April.

Other woes

Krishnakumar talks of other Covid-induced challenges: “We are doing our trips without air-conditioning. This is to ensure the safety of passengers and our driver. While it is hot (out there), passengers understand our point.”

“Physical distancing” is another. “Earlier we could take three adult passengers in the back seats. Now we have limited that to two,” he says.

The demand for outstation trips for business, which would happen mostly during weekdays unlike the weekend leisure outings, is not back up. Companies haven’t resumed the work-from-office mode fully, Anand explains the gap. Santosh complains that fewer people are booking round trips, denting his earnings, as a result. “So many taxi services have come up, even at the airport,” he says.