Skift India Daily: India Bets Big on Medical Tourism With Indigenous Treatments

Air India has entered into an interline partnership with Bangkok Airways that will allow the Tata Group-owned airline’s passengers connections to 10 Southeast Asian destinations beyond the Thai capital. 

Only 25% of Indians traveling abroad purchase travel insurance well in advance while making travel arrangements, while the majority of them wait until the last three days to buy it, according to data compiled by insurance aggregator Policybazaar.

Antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Tata group’s plan to merge its full-service carriers Air India and Vistara. 

Indian carriers have occupied a lion’s share of international air traffic, which is more than pre-Covid times, as per data released by India’s aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). This is testament to the fact that India could rank among the top three markets for outbound travel in the coming years. Leading this expansion in market share in low-cost carrier Indigo. Passengers carried on international flights operated by Indian carriers accounted for 43.5 percent of total overseas travel in the fourth quarter of 2022, up from 39.2 percent in the corresponding period of 2019. In 2020, during the same period, the market share of Indian carriers rose to 65.3 percent, and in 2021, the share of Indian carriers in the total international passenger traffic stands at 49.6 percent. Out of the 30 Indian cities from where international passengers embark/disembark, five Indian cities accounted for approximately 70.2 percent of international passenger traffic. Delhi tops the position in the category with a share of 28.3 percent, followed by Mumbai at 19.8 percent share and Chennai at 8.5 percent share). 

India could rank among the top three markets for outbound travel in the coming years, according to Omri Morgenshtern, CEO of online travel platform Agoda said while speaking to media in India during his recent visit to the country. Indian travellers are increasingly becoming more important to many countries and will become second to China in terms of spending in Asia, he said. An earlier Skift article had reported how the time is ripe for India — which already ticks most of the boxes as a suitable candidate to take over from China as the largest travel source market — to enter the dragon’s space. In India, online travel booking is growing at a faster pace after the pandemic in comparison to other global markets, outpacing the Asia Pacific market, said Morgenshtern. The total transaction value in travel almost hit pre-Covid levels in 2022. “Since 2019, the rank of importance of Indian tourists for Thailand for example has risen from 10th to 6th. I expect it to become more important in the coming years, not only to Thailand but to many countries in APAC,” he added. Morgenshtern also sees a lot of potential for inbound tourism in India. While India’s inbound is growing slower than outbound travel, he believes it is going to see fast growth in the coming years.

The Google pages of many hotels — including premier properties — in the Himalayan hill towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal have been defaced for fraud ahead of the holiday travel rush. Anybody looking for hotels in Darjeeling using the search engine will come across prominent photographs containing the hackers’ phone numbers over a section displaying pictures of rooms and amenities. “We have been lately facing incidents where fraudsters are posting their mobile numbers with payment options to book not only our properties but also several others in the region. We are continually monitoring this and flagging all such posts as ‘spam’ for Google to review and have them removed,” said Viraj Oberoi, director of Elgin Hotels & Resorts, a luxury heritage hotels chain with properties in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim. Cyber miscreants are removing hotel details and creating their own profiles with personal contact details, said Sandipan Ghosh, general secretary of regional travel trade body Eastern Himalayas Travel and Tour Operators’ Association. “Surprisingly, they’re also luring customers to pay in advance while knocking off the goods and services tax charge,” Ghosh said. In India, the goods and services tax on hotels range anywhere between 12-18 percent, depending on the pricing. Customers, while trying to book hotels online for Darjeeling, have been duped to pay advance amounts to bank accounts which don’t belong to the owners of the accommodations. “We’re in touch with the cyber cell department to track such incidents closely and take action accordingly,” Ghosh added. 

India has restored e-visa services for the nationals of Saudi Arabia wanting to visit the country with immediate effect, the Embassy of India in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia tweeted last week. The facility which had been available for five categories of travel — e-tourist visa, e-business visa, e-medical visa, e-medical attendant visa and e-conference visa — was suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic. The application and payment of fees are required to be made for a minimum of four days in advance from the date of travel and wait for the approval. For online filling and submission of the application, applicants need to visit the official website — indianvisaonline.gov.in. Earlier, Saudi Arabia had announced a few exemptions for Indian nationals to obtain a visa for traveling to the country as it looks to India as a key source market for tourism, especially with Saudi’s ambition to achieve 100 million visits annually by 2030. Saudi Tourism Authority during its recent delegation visit to India, featured a range of meetings, industry round-tables and networking events followed by two roadshows in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Saudi Tourism Authority has also, commenced an official partnership with the popular cricket meet — Indian Premier League.

As India plans to increase connectivity to the rest of the country, the government has approved 21 greenfield airports in smaller cities. A total of 11 such airports are operational so far, the latest being the Shivamogga airport in the south Indian state of Karnataka. Since 2018, eight airports, namely Pakyong (Sikkim), Kannur (Kerala), Kalaburagi (Karnataka), Sindhudurg (Maharashtra), Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh), Orvakal (Andhra Pradesh) and Mopa (Goa) airports have been operationalized apart from Shivamogga. The government of India has formulated the greenfield policy for construction of greenfield airport, for which the state government or airport operator has to identify the site and get the feasibility study conducted for construction of airport. Greenfield projects are initiated on undeveloped ground and do not include the renovation or demolition of an existing building. There are no constraints from any previous work on the ground. The government has also granted site clearance for construction of three greenfield airports — Alwar in Rajasthan, Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh and Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. The responsibility of implementation of airport projects including funding of the projects rests with the concerned airport developer including the respective state government in case it is the project proponent. With India’s passenger traffic expected to double by 2030, International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects India to be the world’s third-largest air passenger market by 2030. In the post pandemic recovery, the civil aviation industry in India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing industries.

India will invest around $12 billion over the next two years in airports, aircraft and recruitment to meet the booming demand for air travel. The country aims to increase the number of airports from the present 148 to 220 by 2025, for which private builders will contribute roughly $9 billion, with the balance coming from the government-run Airports Authority of India. It entails new terminal construction, greenfield projects, and refurbishment of existing buildings, including old military airfields from the colonial era, as per a Bloomberg report. “We need to put in place the civil aviation infrastructure and capabilities that by 2047 would be able to support a $20 trillion economy within India,” said the country’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at the ongoing CAPA India Aviation Summit in New Delhi. Scindia said passenger capacity at India’s six major airports is expected to grow to 420 million in four years from 192 million today, and Indian carriers’ fleet will grow to 2,000 aircraft in five years from 700. Additionally, India has eased leasing rules for airlines to lease more aircraft to address aircraft shortages as travel rebounds from the pandemic. He also highlighted how India had tweaked its airplane leasing program to enable airlines to add more aircraft to meet passenger demand, including more “wet leasing,” or renting of planes with crew, for domestic and international routes. Tata Group-owned Air India last month announced a record order for 470 jets and is due to take another 25 leased aircraft.

Indian companies have failed to set targets to reduce corporate travel emissions, according to an annual report by campaign group Transport & Environment. Globally, only 50 companies out of 322 have set targets to reduce business travel, with information technology (IT) services company Wipro paving the way in India. Wipro has achieved a 15-20 percent reduction in air travel emissions between the 2015 and 2020 period. Among all 10 Indian companies featured in the ranking report, only IT services provider Tech Mahindra reports on air travel emissions specifically. “Advancements taking place in India are mostly being led by the technology industry. We invite these technology companies to continue to work on their travel policies and demonstrate leadership to catalyze change in other industries,” said Denise Auclair, corporate travel manager at Transport & Environment. Of the companies that have targets, only four companies meet the “gold standard” of reporting air travel emissions and commitment to reducing them by 50 percent or more, by 2025 or sooner. These are Novo Nordisk (pharmaceuticals, Denmark), Swiss Re (finance, Switzerland), Fidelity International (finance, Britain) and ABN Amro (finance, the Netherlands).

In line with its modernization drive, the Indian Railways has confirmed it will redevelop Thrissur railway station — in the south Indian state of Kerala — with airport-like infrastructure at a budget of $36.2 million to upgrade passenger amenities. “The modernization of Thrissur railway station will be completed by 2025. The action is taken keeping in mind the cultural heritage of Thrissur and the importance of Thrissur Pooram. The railway station will have a wide range of facilities, including a supermarket and a rest centre,” said PK Krishnadas, chairman of the railway ministry’s passenger amenities committee. Having started some time back with the modernization of Gandhinagar Capital railway station in Gujarat, Indian Railways’ spate of station beautification across the country now also includes New Delhi railway station, Bengaluru cantonment, Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, Ahmedabad junction, Chennai Egmore and Udaipur railway station, among others. The goal is to develop self-sustainable railway stations with world-class amenities, high standards of safety, security, comfort, user-friendly passenger facilities, and value-added services.

Indian airlines are expected to record a consolidated loss of $1.6 to 1.8 billion in the financial year 2023-24 ending March 31, 2024, according to aviation consultancy CAPA India. The full-service carriers are predicted to incur a loss of $1.1-$1.2 billion. With a net induction of 132 planes next fiscal, Indian airlines are estimated to take the total fleet of all carriers to around 816 aircraft. However, more than 100 aircraft from different Indian carriers are grounded as a result of supply chain and other issues. Highlighting the potential for growth in aviation, India’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that it was time for India to look at manufacturing aerospace products. He added that the aggregate fleet size of domestic carriers is estimated to reach around 2,000 aircraft over the next five to seven years. He claims that by the end of this year, up to 15 Flying Training Organizations (FTOs) could be established, bringing the total number of such organizations to 50 from the current 35. He emphasized the expansion of the drone industry, stating that it is projected to reach a value of approximately $40 billion by 2030 and produce about 250,000 million employees. All industries have an S-shaped evolution curve, and the minister noted that India is currently in the “infancy and growth phase” of its civil aviation industry.