New Delhi, January 25 2018 - To help Indian travellers travel with confidence in the new year and make exploring even easier, KAYAK (KAYAK.co.in) the world’s leading travel search engine, today launched its first Travel Hacker Guide (KAYAK.co.in/travelhacker) (hereafter referred to as the ‘Guide’) for India. KAYAK has analysed 1.5 billion+ annual travel search queries to create this Guide, ready for travellers looking to start off the new year by planning their next holiday.
The Guide provides insights, travel tips and rankings of the popular and top trending destinations, as well as the most affordable cities to fly to and the best times to book flights, so that Indian travelers can plan and travel smarter in 2018. The Guide’s ‘When to Book’ feature allows Indian travellers to input their home airport and desired destinations, so they can find the best prices as well as information on what’s considered a good deal based on KAYAK’s historical data.
Abhijit Mishra, Regional Manager, India & Middle East of KAYAK, said, ‘We believe the Travel Hacker Guide is an exciting tool which will offer a lot of benefits to Indian travellers. We feel it’s a great addition to our suite of smart travel tools and features which we hope will help give Indian holidaymakers the best, most reliable information they need to plan their travel with confidence’.
‘The Travel Hacker Guide not only ranks cities based on how they fare in terms of searches, it also provides median hotel rates and flight costs and a selection of popular and trending hotels in each destination. It acts as a reference for users on when to book, where to go, interesting hacker tips, and sightseeing locations for each destination,’ Mishra added.
The Guide features four top-ten lists: biggest price drop destinations, for those on a budget, the trending destinations seeing the highest increase in searches, and the most popular destinations, both internationally and domestic.
Srinagar and Port Blair are this year’s most wallet-friendly destinations, recording significant drops in average flight prices
According to the Guide, travel costs for the top-ten wallet-friendly destinations have seen a significant average flight price decrease of 20% year-on-year. Heading the list are Srinagar and Port Blair, both of which recorded average price drops of 24%. Other destinations like Jammu (-23%), Muscat (-22%) and Kochi (-19%) all recorded significant drops in average flight prices in comparison to the previous year, giving Indian travellers even more reason to travel.
In order to help travellers maximise their savings, the Guide also recommends specific timelines for travel to the wallet-friendly destinations. The best month for travel to destinations such as Srinagar, Port Blair and Amritsar is August, whereas November is the least expensive time to travel to Kochi, Madurai and Mangalore.
Bangkok overhauls Dubai as the most popular destination amongst Indian holidaymaker
The Guide included insights into the destinations receiving the highest search volume. According to the Top 10 most popular holiday spots ranking, Bangkok has replaced Dubai as the most popular destination amongst Indian travellers, while New York retains its spot at number two on the list. Dubai, last year’s most popular destination, has moved down two places to third. Goa follows closely in fourth place, three spots up from last year.
Top Ten domestic destinations here
Five domestic destinations including one in Kerala, figure in the TOP TEN TRENDING holiday spots for Indians, according to KAYAK (KAYAK.co.in), the leading world travel search engine.
The ranking is based on over 1.5 billion travel search queries at the Kayak portal.
The Top Ten are: Cairo, Patna, Prague, Jammu, Thiruvananthapuram, Bali, Amritsar, Guwahati, Tampa(Florida) and Kathmandu.
The Kayak study reveals that the reason why the Kerala state capital figures in the list is due to the reasonable hotel tariffs -- ranging from Rs 4000 - Rs 10,000. Average air fares to Thiruvananthapuram when booked 6 months in advance can be as low as Rs 6,500. Temperatures are even throughout the year -- around 27 degrees C, rarely going beyond 29 degrees C. Kayak reports a 112% increase in searches about the city, year on year. City attractions are listed here.
The Kayak survey also suggests that flight prices have dropped 19% year on year to Kochi. This makes the city one of the Top Ten wallet-friendly destinations