Air travel bookings drop by 15% amid second wave of COVID-19, fresh restrictions

"Business is screwed."

That is how the owner of a travel agency in Mumbai summed up the impact of fresh restrictions imposed by the Maharashtra government to curb the alarming rise in COVID-19 infections.

"I haven't done any business to speak of since March 2020," he said, recalling the first nationwide lockdown after the pandemic hit India, which devastated the travel trade. Domestic flights resumed to some extent in three months but air travel hasn't yet reached the pre-pandemic level.

"And whatever improvement was there in the last few months has not been wiped out," the businesses added.

Maharashtra has imposed more restrictions on travel and business as the state continues to top the infections chart day after day. On April 6, it reported over 55,000 fresh cases, with Mumbai clocking 10,040.

"We have already seen a 10-15 percent drop in bookings," said a senior executive from an online travel agency who didn't want to be named. "Metro to non-metro travel is largely not impacted. But most of the metro routes are hit, with the Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi route the most impacted," he added. Delhi has also imposed restrictions as infections are rising, although not as much as in Mumbai.

Industry observers fear a further fall in business after assembly elections being held in several states including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. "Many have travelled to their hometowns to cast their vote. Post the elections, they will be traveling back. We will need to track the numbers after that," said an executive at an aviation consultancy.

From optimism to gloom

The change in circumstances is an unfortunate turn for the industry that was seeing a renewed interest in travel with the start of vaccination across the country from January.

In March, the country's largest online travel agency, MakeMyTrip had seen a 70 percent increase in daily holiday bookings for the upcoming summer season compared with traffic in winter 2020. Train bookings in March and April have shot up by 90 percent over previous months.

Even corporate travel, which was the most impacted last year because of flight restrictions and cost cutting by companies, had started improving but that gain may be wiped out now.

Overall recovery in passenger traffic had also slowed down. In February, 7.83 million people travelled by air, up from 7.73 million a month earlier. The growth of 1.29 percent was among the slowest since domestic flights resumed in May 2020.

The only solace for the industry would be the continued buoyancy in travel to non-metro destinations. Even as the overall recovery in passenger traffic slowed down in February, airports in non-metro cities continued to be outliers. From 14 in January, now 16 airports in these cities and towns surpassed their pre-COVID-19 numbers, data from Airports Authority of India showed.

The industry is now waiting for data from March to understand the impact the second wave of COVID-19 has had.