Travelling in the festive season

‘Year 2020 has been full of twists and turns, and could not have been more disorienting for holidaymakers who were not able to satiate their wanderlust, at least for the most part of the year. But, the grand Indian festive season has given them an opportunity to step out,’ says Arpan Srivastava, Head of Product, Zoomcar.

After a sudden lockdown that lasted for several months, many Indians flocked to holiday destinations when they got a chance. The work-from-home policy across organisations and superior internet penetration further supported them in this pursuit. It ultimately gave birth to a novel concept that is now being called ‘work from anywhere’, ‘work-vacation’, or, more popularly, ‘workcation’. In a workcation, people enjoy an immersive experience of their holiday destination. It enables them to work in a traditional format. However, they get to delve deeper into the neck of the woods and explore the location post their working hours. The mode of transport becomes vital in such scenarios, more so in the current dynamics. Today, people prefer personal mobility over other public alternatives. Therefore, we have received strong demand for self-drive cars at Zoomcar. It includes both regular rentals as well as long-term shared subscriptions. We have now observed a similar demand in the ongoing festive season. Both regular vacationers and ‘workcations’ are driving the figures, thereby enjoying superior flexibility and safety during their respective vacations.

In terms of holiday hotspots, hill stations have dominated the overall landscape as compared to other popular tourist destinations. More holidaymakers are traveling to hilly regions such as Ooty, Mahabaleshwar, Lonavla, Nainital, Mussoorie, Shimla, Manali and so forth. We have also seen groups travelling towards northeastern states like Assam, Sikkim and Meghalaya.

A revival of demand for religious destinations is also being observed with mass visits to Kedarnath, Shirdi, Amritsar, Mathura, Ajmer, Ujjain and Pushkar amongst others. For us, the key cities with maximum bookings included Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. A lot of people even booked cars for visiting friends and family during the festive period.

As arduous as this year has been, it has made us cherish even those aspects of life that we earlier did not give much importance to.