Agoda CEO feels India's outbound travel market to outpace western peers: Report

Data shows that the highest spend in this category in any fiscal year was in FY20 when $7 billion was spent on foreign tours by Indians. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Omri Morgenshtern, CEO of online travel platform Agoda, believes that India's outbound travel market is likely to outpace many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and could rank among the top three markets for outbound travel in the coming years.

In an interaction with Mint, Morgenshtern said that data curated and analysed by Agoda shows that inbound, outbound and domestic travel has increased two-fold since 2019. With domestic and outbound travel booming worldwide, business from India has the chance to increase by double digits. Leisure travel recovery was faster than business travel whereas online bookings made a faster comeback compared to offline bookings, the report adds.

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This comes just a few weeks after the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) released a report on Indian travellers' expenditure. As per the central bank, Indians' expenditure on overseas travel stood at a record high of $10 billion in the first nine months of the ongoing fiscal year.

As per the data, the highest spend in this category was recorded at $7 billion in FY20. Indians spent $1,137 million on travel in December 2022 alone. Asia's third largest economy is growing in double digits on many fronts and the TTV (total transaction value) in travel almost scaled pre-Covid levels in 2022, the report added.

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"It will go beyond in 2023. And what is more interesting is that we see a step change in online travel. The TTV of online travel in India was already bigger in 2022 than in 2019. The growth of online travel TTV in India is outpacing APAC," Morgenshtern told PTI in a separate interaction.

“Since 2019, the rank of importance of Indian tourists for Thailand for example has risen from 10th to 6th. I expect it to become more important in the coming years, not only to Thailand but to many countries in APAC,” he added.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify these reports.

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Moreover, the Agoda survey also highlights that 'wellness' is one of the top three motivations for Indians to travel in 2023, especially for Gen Z and Millenials.

As per Agoda, “Many (people) wish to embark on trips to recharge themselves, mentally and physically, with wellness contributing to the number two spot in the ‘reasons to travel’ ranking of Agoda’s Travel Trend survey. Countries with high inclination include India (20 percent), South Korea (24 percent), Singapore (25 percent) and Thailand (29 percent).”