Bleisure Vacations Taking Off in India Study

Working on excel sheets on a beach to coding in the mountains, technology had blurred the boundaries between work and play. With the pandemic, remote work situations have become quite common among urban Indians. Some state tourism authorities have also jumped on to the workcation trend. Cue business combined with leisure, or bleisure, holidays. 

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Amadeus, a leading travel technology company has released its latest Travel Trends, detailing four key trends that are shaping up travel. And they have found that Indian travellers are embracing bleisure and the workcation, one of the key trends that offers city dwellers a chance for remote working whilst holidaying.

The report identifies two key findings

1. This year Indian travellers are searching for their destination just one day before departure.

2, These travellers are searching for long-term stays with a duration of 14 to 30 days and sometimes more.

Both of these in contrast to 2019, where travelers were searching much more in advance of their trip and were averaging a total of eight days total for their trip.

Mani Ganeshan, Head of R&ampD, Asia Pacific, Amadeus says, &ldquoIn 2021, we can see that Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru are still the most searched destinations in India, the same as 2019. This suggests that Indian travellers are looking to explore closer to home, albeit cautiously as the pandemic is still widespread. However, in 2021, the travellers&rsquo duration of stay is lengthening which tells us the desire to travel never falters, and that travellers are creatively making the most out of their travel and taking advantage of the new hybrid working model we are seeing unfold.&rdquo

Read 13 Reasons Why What to Travel for This Year

Amadeus also explores three other emerging travel trends around the world

Bubble Travel

With uncertainty ongoing, the growth of bubble travel has significant implications for health passports. A recent Amadeus study reveals that 93% of Indian travellers are willing to adopt digital health passports to help facilitate travel reopening, which is key in rebuilding traveler confidence. Across Asia, countries like Australia and New Zealand formed a bubble travel agreement with similar initiatives slated for Singapore and Hong Kong. With vaccination rollouts, these steps could potentially help provide a much-needed boost towards helping travel recover.

Conscious Travel

When it comes to being more environmentally and socially conscious, Amadeus data shows that one third of millennials would like to see more availability of sustainable travel options and ways to reduce their carbon emissions when traveling. It was a similar story across all ages and global markets, with one in four sharing this commitment to travel sustainably.

Indulgent Travel

A renewed thirst for travel is seeing consumers book more indulgent trips. Within Asia, Hong Kong travellers are starting their searches two weeks earlier than they did in 2019 to make the absolute most of their journey while China has launched Viking Cruises, a luxury cruise ship from the port of Qianhai, Shenzhen.

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These travel trends are supported by data analysis conducted from April 26 to May 11, 2021 of searches for departures from June to August. Anonymized, aggregated data was examined from GDPR compliant Amadeus solutions.

This was supported by desk research and information from trusted industry partners.