Cambodia, Philippines, Iceland emerge tourist hotspots

Nearby foreign destinations such as Dubai, Thailand and Singapore remain popular among Indian tourists flying abroad but far-off places like Canada, US, Australia and Turkey also saw robust growth in 2019, a Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) report has said.

The air traffic growth on the long-haul destinations was strong despite major carrier Jet Airways shutting down their operation in April last year.

As per CAPA, the outbound leisure traffic to Australia grew by 12.4 per cent during April-September period. In case of Canada, the growth was 22.2 per cent during April-August of 2019, the latest period for which data is available.

With airlines mounting their capacity on India-Turkey sector, outbound tourist traffic on this route registered 65 per cent jump in April-October period of 2019.

"New international services, particularly those launched by Indian carriers, have stimulated significant growth in visitor numbers in overseas markets. In recent months, Indian visitor arrivals to the Maldives and Turkey have seen tremendous growth after deployment of additional capacity," the report said.

The report from global aviation advisory CAPA found Bhutan, Cambodia, Maldives and the Philippines in Asia Pacific region emerging as hotspots among Indians flying out for vacation.

In West and North Europe, Iceland, Ireland and Scandinavian countries have found favour among Indian leisure travellers. People also preferred exploring Argentina, Brazil and Peru in South America.

The Sydney-headquartered aviation advisory said that foreign airlines tend to focus less on selling individual destinations and instead prefer to capture business and VFR (visiting friends and relatives) travel, which represent high volume, low hanging segments that can drive traffic across their networks.

"However, there is a significant and growing segment of potential higher-yielding leisure travellers ex-India, if national tourism boards and airlines are prepared to invest in appropriate marketing and product development," it added.