Temple fever grips Indians, lifts travel demand and hotel bookings

Online travel portals are flooded with flight and train bookings, hotels teeming with requests for accommodation, and spiritual merchandise on e-commerce platforms is selling like hotcakes.

As the consecration ceremony of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22 draws near, Indians across the country are putting their travelling boots on as the temple frenzy catches on.

India’s largest travel technology (traveltech) platform MakeMyTrip (MMT) has witnessed a substantial four-fold increase in bookings for Ayodhya compared to the previous year.

“Given the comparatively small visitor base for Ayodhya previously, we see a 5X upside in searches (year-on-year) and are already recording 4X more bookings as compared to the last year. Expectedly, the duration of January 10-22 is seeing a sharp increase in bookings,” said Rajesh Magow, co-founder and Group CEO, MakeMyTrip.

Room night bookings in Ayodhya are currently almost 10 per cent of the top pilgrimage sites in the country, according to MMT data.

Online travel portal Ixigo has seen a similar uptick in on-platform searches.

“We are seeing more than a 100 per cent increase in domestic flight searches week-on-week for Ayodhya since the launch of the new airport, and more than a 60 per cent week-on-week increase in train travel searches,” said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and Group CEO, Ixigo.

Leading up to the inauguration, occupancy rates in Ayodhya’s hotels have risen from 80 per cent to 100 per cent, resulting in substantial price hikes reaching up to ~70,000 per night in select hotels, according to data from travel aggregator platform EaseMyTrip.

“The event is expecting an initial attendance of nearly 7,000 guests, projecting a daily footfall between three to five lakh visitors post-inauguration,” said Nishant Pitti, CEO, EaseMyTrip.

To cater to this increased traffic, Ayodhya has, of late, seen a dramatic rise in the number of hotels available in the city.

“There are a host of new hotels and homestays coming up and getting listed in the area, and the supply is ramping up expeditiously. Ayodhya is poised to become one of the major spiritual destinations of the country,” Magow added.

Hospitality major OYO is ramping up its footprint in Ayodhya. The Softbank-backed firm has seen a tremendous 350 per cent increase in searches for the city on its platform over the past year. In the lead-up to the consecration ceremony, the company has opened 65 homestays and hotels in partnership with the Ayodhya Development Authority and the Uttar Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation to support the anticipated surge in tourism.

According to OYO, Ayodhya has consistently held the top position in searches on its app over the past year. On New Year’s Eve, the city witnessed a 70 per cent surge in searches, surpassing popular leisure destinations such as Goa at 50 per cent and Nainital at 60 per cent.

“Spiritual tourism in India is on the precipice of a monumental surge, poised to be one of the biggest growth drivers of our industry in the coming five years. The opening of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya stands as a testament to this, and witnessing the excitement firsthand as I join in the grand ceremony will be truly humbling,” said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and Group CEO, OYO.

The event has also given a fillip to e-commerce sales, with companies like Meesho witnessing an uptick in sales for products related to the cultural significance of the event. In the past one and a half months, the company has observed a three-fold increase in demand for such items.

“There has been an increase in demand for Ram Mandir models and T-shirts. Nearly 70 per cent of these orders came from Tier-2 and beyond cities such as Gorakhpur, Raipur and Vijaywada among others,” said a Meesho spokesperson.

The fervour around spiritual journeys extends beyond Ayodhya. Over the last year, traveltech firms and hotel aggregators alike have witnessed a substantial uptick in demand for spiritual tourism.

“Spiritual tourism as a category has grown by 35 per cent in just over a year in the country, with a majority of this being fed by spiritual centres like Varanasi, Amritsar, Katra, Puri, Shirdi, Haridwar and Tirupati,” said Magow.

This segment, while furnished by only four per cent of the total cities listed on MMT’s platform, contributes to over 12 per cent of the company’s overall transactions.

Considering the surge in popularity of spiritual destinations, OYO recently announced expansion plans in major spiritual hotspots across the country. The company is gearing up to launch 400 properties in popular destinations like Ayodhya, Puri, Shirdi, Varanasi, Amritsar, Tirupati, Haridwar, Katra-Vaishno Devi, and the Char Dham route by the end of this year.

Likewise, EaseMyTrip recently introduced EasyDarshan – a platform specialising in pilgrimage packages in India – which has recorded a 45 per cent surge in travel bookings to spiritual destinations like Puri, Amritsar, Varanasi, Haridwar, and Kochi.

Concurrently, airfare prices to these locations have witnessed a 10-20 per cent increase. Hotel reservations to these destinations have surged by 50 per cent.