SE Asia seen as a potential threat to domestic tourism

The growing popularity of South East Asia as a tourism destination could become one of the biggest threats for the domestic tourism industry.

Outbound tourism to SE Asian countries has been growing at 10-15 per cent per annum, said Mr Hari Nair, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Holiday IQ, a Bangalore-based tourism information portal.

“An increasingly large number of Indians seem to prefer these destinations over domestic travel due to the attractive pricing,” he said, while talking to newspersons on the sidelines of a press meet to share the Holiday IQ Summer 2011 holiday intelligence report here on Tuesday.

The cost of accommodation in most of these countries usually worked out to be lower than most of the hotels in the country, he said.

“Though a customer might have to shell out more on the ticket fares, it is more than offset by the lower room rents in these countries.”

DOMESTIC TOURISM

The domestic tourism industry has been growing at 15-20 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

The approximate value of the domestic tourism industry was pegged at Rs one lakh crore per annum and pilgrimage accounts for close to 40 per cent of the travel within the country, he pointed out.

HolidayIQ.com plans to go global with customised travel portals to cater to Asian markets such as Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.

“Unlike US and Europe most of the other markets in Asia, South Africa or even Latin America do not have dedicated travel portals for tourism. We want to tap these markets. To begin with we are planning to come out with tourism information portal for the people in Indonesia in their local language,” he added.

Source - thehindubusinessline