Weeks before the first ball of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 is bowled on October 5, hotels and air carriers are scoring big with an unprecedented spike in room tariff and flight cost in the 10 host cities - Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Dharamsala, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune. Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram, which will host practice games along with Hyderabad, are also seeing a rise in airfare and stay costs.
Soon after the match schedule announcement in July, Agoda, a digital travel platform, witnessed a 237 percent surge in searches for the 12 cities on its website, with a whopping 1,702 percent spike in searches for stays in Ahmedabad. While Ahmedabad emerged as the obvious fan favourite (the India-Pakistan fixture on October 14 as well as the final in November are set to take place here), the demand in other host cities also increased exponentially around the match dates - Dharamshala (347 percent), Lucknow (225 percent), Hyderabad (199 percent), Pune (169 percent), Chennai (167 percent), Bengaluru (166 percent), Mumbai (154 percent), New Delhi (146 percent), and Kolkata (108 percent) (Source: Agoda). All this even before the ODI World Cup tickets went on sale, on August 25.
Not only domestic cricket lovers, Agoda also witnessed a spike in interest from inbound international travellers, with the UK, the USA, Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia topping the inbound search charts for the host cities around the match dates.
Ahmedabad stays
A quick search for a hotel room in Ahmedabad - for two nights, two adults, from October 14-16 - on Booking.com at the time of writing reflects the difference in price. LemonTree Gandhi Ashram has hiked its regular tariff from Rs 6,544 + taxes to Rs 64,000 + taxes on the India-Pakistan match date. A room in The Leela Gandhinagar is priced at Rs 1.71 lakh + taxes, a stay at Uteliaa Homestay is available for Rs 1.61 lakh + taxes and The Ummed Ahmedabad Airport at Rs 99,998 +taxes. ITC’s Fortune Park Ahmedabad is Rs 79,600 and Fairfield by Marriott is Rs 46,576 per night (regular tariff is Rs 4,378 per night).
Airfare
It is not just hotels, even flight ticket costs are going through the roof. According to inbound flight search data from OTA Insight for the period from October to November 2023, flight searches have grown significantly relative to 2022 in the months leading up to the World Cup.
“We are seeing strong early demand of over 100 percent propelled by the cricket bonanza in the last quarter of the year. Currently, airfares for the top match venues from sectors like Mumbai and Delhi are witnessing 30-60 percent surge for October-November: Ahmedabad 50-60 percent, Mumbai 40-50 percent and Kolkata 30-40 percent. High demand routes for other match venues like Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Dharamshala, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Pune are also seeing a 20-40 percent surge in fares,” Indiver Rastogi, President & Group Head, Global Business Travel, Thomas Cook (India) and SOTC Travel, said.
According to Prahlad Krishnamurthi, Chief Business Officer, Cleartrip, for the India-Pakistan match in Ahmedabad and India versus England in Lucknow, Cleartrip is observing 75 percent and 20 percent growth in segments compared to the week before the match day. For the India versus Pakistan match in Ahmedabad, flight ticket prices have also surged by 28 percent.
More rooms
Even as cities are running out of rooms to accommodate the cricket lovers swarming the host cities, OYO Hotels, is adding 500 hotels in the host cities to meet the skyrocketing demand.
Online travel company MakeMyTrip is also targeting to increase the inventory of homestay properties across select metros and cities for the October-November matches. According to a press release, MakeMyTrip has developed a new feature reflecting the distance of the accommodation from the cricket stadium in the city. The company hopes this feature will help cricket fans book the most suitable accommodation option for them.
Match tickets
Not just accommodation and flights, even match tickets are being sold at unbelievable prices. At the time of writing, a US-based ticket reselling website has 28 tickets for the November 15 semifinal match in Mumbai – the price for one ticket is listed as Rs 1.18 lakh for an upper-tier seat, Rs 1.77 lakh for a lower-tier seat with unrestricted view and Rs 95,000 for Row L1 of the Sunil Gavaskar Pavilion. Ticket prices for the India-Sri Lanka match in Mumbai on November 2 range from Rs 35,000 to Rs 85,000 with the site warning that “This Event will soon Sell Out”. The most in-demand is the India-Pakistan match in Ahmedabad - South Premium East 4, Row PP ticket is Rs 1.10 lakh, Row BB ticket is Rs 1.91 lakh, while South Premium West 2 Row R is Rs 18.25 lakh.
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