Vietnam Was Most Googled Tourist Destination for Indians
19.12.2023 - 12:12
/ skift.com
Vietnam was the most-searched destination for Indians in 2023, according to the Google trends. There was a revival of global exploration after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The resurgence is evident in the latest report, unveiling the most Googled tourist destinations of the year. Here are some of the top searches:
Having announced visa-free entry for Indians, it’s interesting to note that Sri Lanka and Thailand feature in the top 5 searched destinations. Vietnam is also likely to be the next destination to offer visa-free entry to Indians. In the first 10 months of this year, Vietnam had almost 10 million visitors.
Skift’s earlier articles have explored how Indian travelers are now opting for destinations that don’t require them to navigate the maze of visa applications.
Minister forCivil Aviation, Jyotiraditya M Scindia, announced the implementation of a systematic approach to address congestion challenges at various airports.
Identifying and Resolving Congestion Issues: Congestion problems were noted at major airports during the festive season and winter 2022, resulting in prolonged waiting times for passenger processing at various touchpoints. Scindia personally inspected arrangements at Delhi Airport in December 2022, alongside senior officials of the ministry of civil aviation, directing necessary infrastructure enhancements.
Simultaneously, major airport operators in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Chennai received instructions to identify and address bottlenecks in passenger processing, ensuring increased capacities to meet growing demands and prevent congestion during upcoming festive seasons and peak times.
Expansion of Efforts in September 2023: In September 2023, an additional 10 airports were identified, and operators were sensitized to proactively augment capacities as needed to avoid future congestion. The causes of congestion were identified, leading to the formulation and implementation of a mitigating action plan which included demolition of waiting lounges, retail outlets, and office spaces at airports like Delhi and Mumbai to create more space for passenger infrastructure facilities, among other things.
The U.S.-based Around.Us mobile application got 20% of app’s daily users from smaller Indian cities like Patna, Lucknow and Indore. The company said in a release that it is looking to reshape travel exploration through an interactive map, highlighting the top 10 points of interest globally.
India has emerged as a biggest user base, contributing to almost 150,000 out of the ever-growing 750,000 million downloads.
Community-Driven Curation The curation process for the Around.Us application involves a proprietary algorithm, and in the future, the application