Holi 2023: Hotel and flight bookings surge as Holi adds colour to leisure travel

The festive season is in the air, and it appears that more Indians staying away from their homes are spending the festival of colours with their families. Not only are they travelling to their native places to celebrate Holi, but a lot of them are spending the vacation time in exotic places like Goa, Dubai, and Singapore.

Data show that Indians have travelled more during this Holi week than during the corresponding period last year. While hotels, trains, and flights were booked to capacity, there was a 15% spike in air fares along favourite routes. Train bookings to the popular destinations also saw an increase of 10%. Indian Railways ran 90 extra Holi special trains to meet the demand for extra travellers.

While the demand for flights was high for Indian as well as overseas destinations, prominent hotel booking app Oyo revealed that the demand for hotel bookings was higher in small cities. People preferred local to foreign destinations, and the domestic hotel search soared 89%. Advance booking for leisure trips went up by 30% on a year-to-year basis.

The demand for flights was quite high during the Holi week, and air fares between Mumbai and Goa went up by 33%. For Pune-Delhi flights, it was 23% higher, while Delhi-Bengaluru and Delhi-Lucknow fares were as high as 20% higher than the normal rates. The flight between New Delhi and Ranchi was charging fares as much as 13% higher than on normal days.

To put the spiked demand in more perspective, the air fare between Delhi and Patna on March 7 ballooned to Rs 11,000 compared to the normal fare of Rs 4,000.   

Flights to Varanasi, Jaipur, Goa, Kashmir, Dubai, and Singapore were the most booked during the Holi week.

Surge in hotel demand  

Oyo revealed that there was a high escalation in the hotel demand for Tier-2 cities. Bookings for Prayagraj were up by 127%, while those for Patna and Lucknow witnessed surges of 126% and 125%, respectively. People booked hotels in these cities for an average of six days.  

Mathura’s Holi is famous for its grandeur and versatility. There was no wonder hotel bookings for the city were as high as twice what they were on normal days, as revealed by EaseMyTrip.