According to preliminary data from STR, for three consecutive days in April –16-18 April, 2022, India’s hotel industry crossed pre-pandemic comparables in occupancy and average daily rate (ADR). It was the first time that both occupancy and ADR were above 2019 levels in India. When using a running 7-day average, occupancy and ADR have been above 90% of pre-pandemic comparables since late-March. On Monday, 18 April, India recorded its highest ADR index of the year at 106% of the 2019 comparable.

VFS Global is organising a webinar for the travel trade on Thursday 28 April from 11am-12pm IST. The online session will give updates on VFS Global’s operations, latest visa guidelines for the summer travel season and all the convenient services on offer. Register for this informative webinar on https://event.webinarjam.com/register/394/xyo1rbr1 and hear senior executives from VFS Global speak about their services, solutions and what’s new.

Indian travellers are more likely to pick sustainable travel alternatives that cause the least damage to the environment, revealed a recent report by booking.com. According to the report, 91% of Indian travellers desire to travel sustainably over the next 12 months. Further, 88% of the travellers also expressed that they were much more likely to pick a sustainable travel option when it was presented to them, even if they weren’t actively looking for one.

Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs & Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, recently reviewed the progress of the India International Convention & Expo Centre (IICC) in Dwarka, Delhi. He also asked officials to expedite the works for completion of the Phase-1 of the project. “IICC will serve as a major economic driver helping India capture a larger share of global meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions market,” said Goyal.

After Thailand eased entry rules for international travellers, including pre-arrival and arrival RT-PCR tests, KD Singh, Founder & President, TravelBullz, said, “We are very excited to receive the news from the government of Thailand, lifting all restrictions related to mandatory RTPCR & other requirements before or after arrival in Thailand. We have already seen tremendous response from agents during April but with restrictions going away from 1st of May , the summer season is saved. We already have some operators confirming series and we expect a multi fold increase in travellers in the next two months. To capture the upbeat mood of travellers TravelBullz in association with Tourism Authority of Thailand has launched special campaign Welcome Back to Thailand focusing on KIDS GO FREE , Honeymoon Specials , WORKATIONS & Party in Thailand. Here’s welcoming everyone to the land of smiles.”

The seventh edition of the M!CE Travel Show 2022 concluded successfully in Pune this Sunday. The two-day B2B table top event saw 23 exhibitors meet and interact with 45 key corporate buyers on April 23-24, 2022. Organised by DDP Exhibitions, the exclusive M!CE event plans to replicate this in other cities of India soon. Key exhibitors included Singapore Tourism Board, Oman Air, Oman Convention Bureau and Shangri-La.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that India is going to introduce a special AYUSH visa category. This will facilitate people to travel to India for AYUSH therapy. Also, he added, “’Heal in India’ can become a big brand of this decade.” Wellness centers based on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha etc. can be very popular, he said.

According Reserve Bank of India data, the money sent abroad by Indians for travel grew threefold from $316.81 million in February 2021 to close to $1 billion ($980.45 million) in February 2022. This is under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) for resident individuals. It crossed the pre-pandemic level of $539.74 million in February 2020. Indians spent about $3.23 billion for travel, sharply down from $6.95 billion in FY20.

Julia Simpson, president and CEO, WTTC has said that the EU green travel pass has now been adopted  by 62 countries. “If we are to survive another pandemic we need to fully integrate a traveller’s health status into their digital travel documents. A good example is the EU green travel pass that has now been adopted by 62 countries. Let us find a single system for the world,” she pointed out.

Julia Simpson, president and CEO, WTTC, at its Global Summit highlighted that the pandemic rewrote the rule book on how we live and how we travel. She said that WTTC is announcing its latest Economic Impact Research which shows that over the next 10 years to 2032 Travel & Tourism is poised to have an average annual growth rate of 5.8%. “By the end of 2022 we will have recovered to $8.35 trillion,” she added.