Over the last decade, the way people travel has dramatically evolved. Previously, key triggers for outbound have been business, visiting friends and relatives (VFR), higher education or pilgrimage. Even meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) were predominantly held within the country. However, the travel landscape has transformed significantly and a wider array of countries features on the bucket list of an outbound traveller.
There are many factors which have contributed to the change in the Indian context. Some of these can be explained with ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’. This principle states that human beings first care about basic needs (food, water and rest then safety and security) after which comes psychological needs (family, intimate relationship, friends and then prestige) and finally self-fulfilment needs (such as creative activities, hobbies and self-indulgence). We can clearly map these needs with the rising income levels in India and slot the behavioural changes with variations in trends of outbound travel. Additionally, millennials are more inclined towards exploring offbeat bag packing trips where they are skipping stages from fulfilling their basic needs to a self-actualization stage.
Till liberalization of the economy, size of middle class was small, and the affluent society was not visible enough to make “Indian Tourist” a brand. Reasons for travel other than HNIs were primarily religious or more VR than VFR. If one looks at the airlines operating in 1980s, one will find predominance of airlines such as Saudia, Gulf Air, British Air and Lufthansa. While the first two catered to religious traffic and last two were hugely dependent on ethnic markets like Punjab and Gujarat for migrant and visiting relative traffic. Even Air India’s destinations were mainly dotted around religious, labour and immigrant markets.
As the income levels and size of population corresponding to those income levels rose, people started spending on tourism and for leisure activities more often. Another reason was to brag about the fact that one has been to an overseas location. ‘I have got a visa stamp in my passport’ was a statement to make though may be obliquely! And the proof of pudding is in the fact that 7 million outbound trips from India in 2005 doubled to 14 million in 2011.
And then Indian travellers started to fulfil their dream choices, hobbies and ‘been there’ desires, thus, moving to the final stage of self-actualization. These travellers have had their fair share of holiday travel and shopping at the popular destinations. Now, they are looking for more off-beat locales and experiences including music festivals, sports events, and culinary experiences amongst others. Surely, the Indian traveller has left a brand of his own stamped on the international outbound travel.
This trend set by the Indian traveller gave rise to improved existing air connectivity as well as addition of new flights. The advent of low fare carriers has been a great stimulant, especially on short-haul destination within 3-5 hour flight segments. Moreover, traffic from India to Australia, Burma, Canada, Malaysia, Maldives, Netherlands, Oman, Russia and Turkey has nearly doubled in the last five years. Traffic to already dense routes such as China, France, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Singapore, Thailand, the UK and USA has grown between 25-50% during the same period. The outbound traffic in 2017 stood at 26 million, a whopping 370% more than the traffic in 2005. Most of the millennials wants to travel oversees over domestic tourist places.
Tourism boards of various countries are now promoting unique holiday propositions for discerning Indian travellers including travel by self-driven cars to and through scenic routes. Pioneers among those are Australian, British, New Zealand, South African tourism and Swiss in collaboration with car rental companies like Hertz.
And surely, given our vast population large numbers of people are still at stage one or two as per Maslow, hence, the traditional outbound travel still has the highest takers.
The facilities such as visa on arrival to Indian traveller by an increasing number of countries has not only provided a stimulus but have enabled the traveller to make decisions at a short notice. As India has opened VoA for many countries, a likely reciprocation will further augment the outbound traffic.
Factors like healthy GDP growth rate, increasing spending capacity, desire to travel and experience v/s savings has made outbound tourism an unstoppable juggernaut.