India Travels Differently Now

In the early years of my career, I spent two years travelling through villages in Rajasthan and Punjab as a medical representative. Most of the India I saw then had never stayed in a hotel and had no particular reason to. Travel once meant necessity, not leisure. 

For most Indians in the 1990s and early 2000s, hotels were functional stopovers—places to sleep, eat breakfast, and leave from. Few chose a hotel for the experience itself. Hospitality was driven largely by location and price: build in the right place, and guests would come. 

That model lasted until travel itself began to change. Better roads, rising incomes and a generation inspired by what they saw online turned journeys into experiences people wanted to remember, not just complete. 

The Shift

By the time the industry noticed, the hotel had stopped being the backdrop. 80 per cent of Indian travellers today plan to spend most of their time at the property itself, according to Booking.com. The global average is 51 per cent. 

The geographic picture changed along with this. For most of this industry's history, pilgrimage was something hotels politely accommodated rather than seriously built for. The assumption was that people visiting Varanasi or Tirupati wanted austerity, not quality. That assumption was wrong, and the market has corrected it firmly. Accommodation bookings across 56 pilgrimage destinations grew 19 per cent in FY25, with 15 recording growth of more than 25 per cent, according to MakeMyTrip. Premium room bookings at these destinations grew 24 per cent in the same period. The family visiting Ayodhya today arrives with higher expectations. They have planned and saved for the trip, and now expect comfort, warmth and food that feels familiar.

The Culinary Effect 

Food is where hospitality has changed most sharply. Hotel dining rooms, once among the best options in Indian cities, gradually became functional spaces rather than destinations. Independent restaurants and local chefs filled that gap, drawing travellers with authentic regional food. 

Today, many Indians choose hotels partly for what they serve. A property offering genuine Awadhi or Mangalorean cuisine has an advantage that no standardised menu or discount can match. 

Social media accelerated that shift. Viral reels of an old kulcha shop in Amritsar or a home kitchen in Chettinad began pulling young travellers to places tourism campaigns had overlooked. Gen Z did not just discover these destinations—they helped define them. 

The same refusal to accept the packaged version that led them to seek out the real kulcha led them to book Ziro in Arunachal Pradesh over Shimla, Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh over Jaipur, Pakyong in Sikkim over Darjeeling. Gen Z and millennials led nine in ten international trips from India in 2025, according to Niyo, and domestically, Scapia shows the same pattern reshaping India’s lesserknown map. 

At Sarovar, we built our presence in pilgrimage and leisure cities and smaller destinations years before they attracted mainstream attention. The reasoning was simple. Build where the real India travels, not where the industry assumes it should.