International travel plans non-existent this holiday season, domestic destinations hopeful of gaining market in the coming days.
GUWAHATI:Travelling during the long puja vacations has been a rising trend over the past years. Be it with family or friends, interntional vacation had been gaining an upper hand over pandal hopping. And Guwahatians were no less.
A majority of the people go missing from the city every Durga puja, travelling to mostly international destinations, and opting for domestic places usually only when there’s a cash crunch.
Every tour operator across Guwahati get busy planning itineraries, filling documents and managing clients from a month or two prior to the holidays.
But like every other business, the COVID-19 pandemic has broken the spine of the tourism industry. While inbound traffic to Assam and the other northeastern regions has completely halted allegedly due to the strict Covid protocols followed by the states, the outbound travel market has also fallen significantly.
Durga puja is just around the corner and the tour operators are seen lamenting over the lack of bookings with many even expecting complete shut-down of shop in the coming months.
G Plus asked a few tour operators about the passion amongst Guwahatians to travel after being locked down for months. The answers were in the negative.
A few even passed off the question as being sarcastic.
“There is no such booking to talk about. Earlier we had to hire more officials and even then there was no time to rest. This year we got just a few business travel bookings. Not surprisingly no one has come to even enquiry about the year-end travels, the ones in December-January,” said Galib Anwar of Beach Vacation, a tour operator.
Many have attributed the lack of travel enthusiasm either to people’s rising cautiousness of the dreaded virus or financial crisis due to months of closure.
Vishal Jain of Shivani Aviates Pvt. Ltd, and President of North East Travel Trade Association said, “There is no international market, the domestic has come up a little. The international tourism boards are trying hard to promote their products but the bigger issue is getting a visa. Many countries have put India under the advisory rules due to our rising Covid situation. Secondly, there are many rules attached to issuing of visa to Indians like testing in the airport upon arrival. And if one is found symptomatic he/she has to go under 14 days’ quarantine at his/her own expense. We are also pressurising more towards domestic travel as it would be hassle-free to our customers. Yet the bookings are very less, mostly of businessmen and students. For tourism we have negligible booking.”
“Puja has always been a high season for our travel industry, both overseas and domestic. The booking jumps up by over fifty percent during these holidays. We work on the packages, offers, plans almost four to five months prior to the season’s start. This year there is nothing as such, and we do not foresee much business even in the coming days,” he continued.
“We are just being hopeful as many people are dependent only on outbound tourism. We have started re-promoting as countries like Dubai, Maldives, Sri Lanka have already reopened and are welcoming Indians as well. The cruises are the most affected but even they have started advertising aggressively, like in Holland and America,” he added.
The biggest apprehension is that of getting stuck in a foreign country for days if tested positive. Tour operators have thus blamed the strict testing rules for people’s reluctance to travel, simultaneously accepting the fact that the testing procedures are also necessity if the pandemic is to be curbed.
However, domestic travel could be looking forward for some major market amid the pandemic in the absence of overseas destinations. Bookings were mostly reported for places like Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
However, inbound tourist traffic to Assam and the northeast region is nonexistent. Tour operators opined that as the whole north east region has always operated as an inclusive package for people from other parts of the country and abroad, the closure of gates to tourists, or extremely strict guidelines by some states like Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya have hampered the overall market.