Travel is cheap

Holiday plans: Travel and tourist fair at Kanteerava stadium

But with recession here, only a few can afford the luxury

Prices of travel packages and tours are cheaper now, but there seem to be no takers.

This was the trend seen at the Travel and Tourism Fair held at the Kanteerva Stadium over the last three days.u00a0

"Foreign tourists booking for our tours have declined by 40 per cent since last year," Anil Nair, head of UAExchange, said. "Domestic booking has also taken a 10 per cent beating," he added.

N Sevgi Boz, tourism counsellor from the Turkish Embassy, said, "Last year we received 60,000 Indian tourists,"u00a0
This year, the number is yet to pick up.u00a0 "We always have a lower inflow of Indian tourists in the first half of the year.

But I'm confident the influx of Indian tourists will increase, as it has done over the past few years."

Closer home, states like Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Gujarat tried to woo visitors, but to little effect.

Parchurya Dowearh, sales executive with Club Mahindra said the recession had resulted in a slump of 25 per cent in tourism business.u00a0

G Kuriakose, marketing executive of the Kerala Tourism Board, said, "A good 60 per cent of tourists to Kerala come from north India. This has largely remained unchanged, but international tourists who booked packages in advance cancelled them following the terrorist attack in Mumbai."

Yogesh Sharma of Incredible India, added, "Owing to terror troubles in the northern and western parts of the country, our focus remains east and south India this time. But we are quite optimistic."

Plan, plan, plan

However visitors at the fair were left to make plans on their own.

Visweswara, a businessman, said, "None of the packages I've seen thus far are truly tourist-friendly. I'm planning my holiday in late 2009, I'm doing all the homework by myself."

Jayant, who is also planning a holiday, said, "Withu00a0 economic recession, I figured I really needed a holiday. The ads I saw brought me to the fair. But the prices of packages are well beyond my budget," he said.

He is among the many left to chalk out travel plans from scratch.

Mad scramble for flyers

In a bid to boost air traffic growth, all airlines have started slashing their fares, especially of international flights.

"The number of flights by all airlines each week fell from 10,922 in March to 9,635 in October, according to latest official figures," said, A.N Vijay, a travel agent.

"There has also been a 30-32 per cent fall in passenger traffic respectively at Delhi and Mumbai airports u00e2u0080u0093 the two busiest hubs. So, one way of increasing air traffic is by slashing the rates," he said.

Air India cut its ticket prices by 82 per cent to match fare cuts announced by rivals Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines. "We have cut fares on 20 sectors by up to 82 per cent. This will largely benefit passengers on metro routes," said Jeetan Bhargava, Air India spokesperson.

Over the past four months, there has also been a sharp decline in aviation fuel prices.u00a0 While some air carriers earlier this month reduced the fuel surcharge on the ticket price by Rs 200 to Rs 400, they did not touch the base fare.

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