Cricket tourism drives travel business in spite of rise in costs

Given this is the first time since the pandemic that IPL matches are being played across India, the company has witnessed a demand surge of over 60-70% for travel to match venues for both April and May (till data) from last year, said Rajeev Kale, president and country head, holidays, MICE, visa for Thomas Cook India Ltd.

“This is not just restricted to cricket aficionados; several corporates, too, are sending employees. Our data indicates high demand for IPL match destinations such as Lucknow, Hyderabad, Mohali, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Guwahati, Kolkata, Mumbai, Jaipur, Dharamshala and Chennai,” he said.

Unit SOTC Travel has also seen the business grow between 30% and 40% in travel demand versus last year’s season. Additionally, it has already started receiving queries for the World Cup set in October.

Sports experience and travel company DreamSetGo, backed by Dream Sports, the parent of Dream11, is looking to bring travellers to India for the upcoming Men’s Cricket World Cup. While it is not responsible for domestic travel for the tournament, the company’s founder expects about 300,000 fans around the country will travel to watch these matches and another 150,000 travellers to come in from abroad in the coming months. It expects to serve traffic from the UK, UAE and Australia, said its founder and chief business officer, Monish Shah.

“There’s a huge demand for a strong sports market. Fans now want to know where they want to be seated, what sort of experience they will have at the stadium as well as if there are any fan interactions with players. We are also considering tying up with some IPL teams next year as well,” Shah said.

Online travel agency, Booking.com’s country head for the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia, Santosh Kumar, said it’s hard to share the precise figures, but it observes spikes in bookings for sporting events since several athletes, their teams and sports enthusiasts travel to these events.

For another aggregator, Ixigo, locations such as Mohali, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Guwahati, and Kolkata have seen a month-on-month increase in April. The rise is as high as 40% in Guwahati and 25% in Mohali.

“We have seen a significant rise in bookings and search queries for some of the destinations that are also IPL host cities for the month of April. Overall, April has seen a 42% rise in flight bookings also because of two extended long weekends falling in the month. There is a strong surge in demand for mini breaks by families as bulk bookings are on the rise this month,” said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and group chief executive of Le Travenues Technology Ltd, which owns Ixigo. The company looks at data which combines bookings and searches number. It has seen a 20% month-on-month increase in flight search queries and bookings for March and April this year, owing to the IPL.