Religious tourism driving demand for tier II and III markets: ixigo CEO

Bengaluru: While many industries have been complaining about a muted urban demand, travel and tourism seems to be still riding high on the post-pandemic wave. With the festival season ongoing, ixigo is seeing record-breaking numbers in its flights and buses, said Aloke Bajpai, Chairman and Managing Director and Group CEO of the company.

“Both these (flight and bus bookings) grew at more than 50 per cent year-on-year (YoY) for the Diwali period. On some flight routes, we've seen even a 70-80% increase, especially for international destinations such as Thailand, Georgia, Bali, Vietnam, and Singapore,” Bajpai told DH.

These segments have been the online travel platform’s fastest-growing categories in the July to September period as well.

Buses saw a 60 per cent plus spike on popular routes with new travel hotspots such as Pune, Indore, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Guntur, Rajahmundry and Bhubaneswar. Religious destinations such Tirupati and Shirdi also saw an increase in the final weeks leading up to Dussehra and Diwali.

“Religious tourism is definitely one of the key drivers for travel from tier-II, tier-III cities that ixigo serves, like when we look at airports such as Ayodhya or Varanasi", Bajpai said, adding that it is still an underserved market.

Commenting on the recent talk about a tourism dip in Goa, Bajpai said, “One macro trend which I don't know how Goa will overcome is the fact that you can actually do a trip to Vietnam or even Dubai at either the same or a lower price. Domestic destinations are not competing with other domestic destinations anymore, they are competing with everything in Southeast Asia, Middle East and Central Asia.”

ixigo’s gross transaction value (GTV) for trains in Q2 FY25 grew by 36 per cent, flights 43 per cent, and buses 46 per cent. While trains have been at the centre of ixigo’s focus, a shift has happened over the last few quarters such that flights and buses are 59 per cent of the contribution margin line.

“I think it's just the start of that trend given that the categories where we were smaller, we are growing faster and they will start showing up in a bigger way over time,” Bajpai said.

On ixigo’s recent acquisition of train food delivery startup Zoop, he said, “We believe that the total addressable market is about a billion dollars worth of food that gets consumed inside trains and at stations right now, a very tiny part of which is being done online.”