Indians are cancelling or rescheduling their international holiday trips with local Indian destinations due to the coronavirus outbreak
Priya Sahni, an architect, had made an elaborate plan for her honeymoon trip to Bali. But it never happened, due to coronavirus.
While there were no cases of coronavirus reported in Indonesia when Sahni had planned her holiday in February this year, she took no chances especially due to Indonesia being a travel hub for Chinese travelers.
On March 2, Indonesia President Joko Widodo announced two cases of coronavirus.
“When we were planning for Bali, we did not find any direct flights and we had to halt either at Singapore or Malaysia. But these areas were affected. So, we switched our plan and decided to go to Dubai," she said.
However, Sahni had to cancel the Dubai plan as well as cases have been reported in UAE too.
"Even the recent case in Delhi, the person has a travel history of Dubai. So, I don’t think there is any international place for us right now. All my honeymoon plans are spoiled. Have no plans at present. May go somewhere locally. We want to avoid airports as there the chances of getting infected with the virus is high. So, we don’t want to take the risk,” she added.
Many like Sahni have either rescheduled or cancelled international holiday plans after the coronavirus outbreak in China.
At the time of writing this article, the death toll in China stood at 2,934 due to the outbreak. The total death toll stands at 3,120 and around 90,000 people in 64 countries have been affected due to the virus.
With so many countries reporting coronavirus cases, the epidemic has created a global scare. This has impacted travel industry the most as travel is the most vulnerable in such scenarios.
Going domestic
Rashna Khanna Arora, who resides in Qatar and is a supervisor at Hamad Medical Corporation, had planned to go to Bali along with her sister Natasha Khanna, a PR professional in Mumbai, in the second week of February.
“We had coordinated our flights so that we all could be in Bali at the same time. We had planned this last year in December. At that time not much was known about corona. It didn’t click us then that it would spread so fast and that too globally. Arrangements for local travel in Bali was also in place," said Khanna.
But when many countries started reporting cases of the outbreak, Khanna and her family started contemplating whether to go or not. And few days prior to taking the holiday trip, there was a change in plan. They decided to not go to Bali and went to Goa instead.
Adding to this, Arora said, “We had all planned the leaves and my daughter was excited for this holiday. Plus, her school vacations were going on. So, we decided to fly down to India from Qatar for the holiday.”
The silver lining here was not much was lost in terms of travel cost.
“There was nominal cancellation fee for flights that was charged and 75-80 percent was refunded,” said Khanna.
Khanna is not alone in replacing international destinations with local ones.
“We had planned to go to Thailand in the end of March. We had done the reservations in the first week of January. We had planned in advance to get flight tickets at cheaper rates. But then this (coronavirus) happened and we cancelled and now have decided to go to Coorg and Mysore, said Disha Hoskote, VP, marketing, at a professional services firm.
She said that when they had initially called the airlines for cancellation, they offered 50 percent refund but later on they offered us 100 percent refund as the airlines also had cancelled flights due to the outbreak.
Like Khanna and Hoskote, many Indians are looking for domestic destinations and this is why travel companies are expecting India to gain some inbound tourism market.
However, the coronavirus has been a dampener for many travelers. A family who had plans to celebrate Holi in Bali had to cancel their five-day overseas trip.Time to show-off your poker skills and win Rs.25 lakhs with no investment. Register Now!
