Flight cancellations and delays due to Go First filing for insolvency, and the consequent increase in airfares by other airlines, is driving demand for bus tickets on shorter but popular routes.
There was a seven-fold jump in bus bookings on Go First’s top route — Lucknow-Delhi — since the cash-strapped carrier got grounded, said Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer, AbhiBus, a bus booking platform. Sharma said Go First had seven daily flights on the Lucknow-Delhi route, among the highest. “As the fares shot upwards of Rs 8,000 (for this route), buses with a starting price of Rs 399, going up to Rs 1,500 for premium buses like AC sleeper, saw a 7X jump starting May 5."
Facing a financial crunch, Go First grounded itself on May 3 and applied for insolvency resolution.
Kapil Raizada, Co-founder, IntrCity SmartBus, also said the surge in airfares is behind the increase in demand for bus travel.
“The 3x multiplier in air fares is now 5x because of the uncertainty due to the Go First issue. With airfares where they are currently, I think bus travel is making more sense to people and we are seeing that in the demand increase,” he explained.
Cross-country demand
Flight fares to Delhi-Bagdogra (Bengal) soared and were more than Rs 10,000. "We saw customers were booking (bus tickets for) Delhi-Patna and then Patna to Bagdogra. This entire trip cost less than 20 percent of the flight fare,” noted Sharma.
He added that as Go First accounts for six out of 30 Delhi-Srinagar flights, the moment these flights halted and fares started soaring, daily bus bookings on the Delhi-Jammu sector jumped to over 1,000 a day against a regular daily average of 300-400 bookings on this route.
“Growth in the highest absolute number of bookings was witnessed on the Mumbai-Goa route. Customers love this route and we usually see 1,500 bookings on weekdays and over 2,000 bookings for weekends. On May 5, 6 and 7 (weekend), we saw a total of 9,000 bookings on the Mumbai-Goa route. The starting bus fare on this route is less than Rs 1,000 and dozens of buses, including luxury sleeper buses, were available on these days, making it the obvious and cost-effective choice for Mumbaikars,” Sharma said.
He added that Mumbai to Ahmedabad was the clear winner post the Go First grounding as demand for buses had spiked seven-fold during the weekend of May 5. Go First operated up to 14 daily flights from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, he said.
The maximum preferred length for bus journeys is 600-800 km, which can be covered overnight and the biggest shift by air travellers typically happened on these routes, the bus aggregators said. “Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Hyderabad-Bangalore, Chennai-Mumbai, Bangalore-Goa are the overnight journey routes that saw massive shifts,” added Sharma.
Go First's insolvency is driving a surge in demand for premium category bus travel, and this trend is expected to coincide with a significant increase in road trips, said Nandivardhan Jain, CEO of Noesis, a hospitality consulting and hotel investment advisory.
This year, there has been 15 percent year-on-year growth in summer travel, as compared to last year, said Raizada. “This is nearly 2x the average growth rate of 7.7 percent over last year,” he added.
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