While the Ram temple consecration ceremony is on at Ayodhya, the travel and tourism industry seems gearing up to latch on to a rising interest in spiritual tourism. According to MakeMYTrip, a leading online travel platform, it has “recorded a 97 per cent growth in searches for spiritual destinations on the platform, in the last two years (calendar year 2023 Vs calendar year 2021).” It also finds a departure from the past in terms of the profile of the audience. It finds an uptick in the interest from the younger audience as against it being largely restricted to older generation earlier.
It says, 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 spirituals centres like Varanasi, Amritsar, Katra, Puri, Shirdi, Haridwar, and Tirupati. “This segment, while furnished by only 4 per cent of the total cities listed on our platform, contributes to over 12 per cent of overall transactions underscoring its importance.”
During the period (calendar year 2023 Vs calendar year 2021), among the top 10 destinations, Ayodhya tops as the most searched with a whopping 585 per cent surge in searches and as high as a 1806 per cent increase in the searches on the platform since the announcement for the ceremony on January 22nd).
Finding Ayodhya “poised to become one of the major spiritual destinations of the country”, it says, at the moment, the room night bookings in Ayodhya are almost 10 per cent of the top pilgrimage sites in the country so the potential for growth is significant. Also, there are a host of new hotels and homestays coming up and getting listed in the area, and the supply is ramping up expeditiously.
The other top nine destinations most searched include: Ujjain (witnessing a 359 per cent surge in searches) followed by Badrinath (343 per cent), Amarnath (329 per cent), Kedarnath (322 per cent), Mathura (223 per cent), Dwarkadhish (193 per cent), Shirdi (181 per cent), Haridwar (117 per cent) and Bodh Gaya (114 per cent).
While the focus has been on Ayodhya, recording a peak in searches on December 30th, the day of airport inauguration, MakeMyTrip also finds that the heightened interest in Ayodhya was being recorded from international destinations. The share of searches from the US contributing to 22.5 per cent, followed by the gulf region (22.2 per cent), Canada (9.3 per cent), Nepal (6.6 per cent), Australia (6.1 per cent). According to MakeMyTrip, the searches have been translating to actual bookings but it is unable to share the numbers because it is the silent period.