"Currently the economy of some of the European countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal is weak. Hotel owners are offering huge discounts and transportation is cheap too. The prices of rooms have hit rock bottom is countries like Greece," Raju Choksi, MD, Ace Tours.
With Indian economy looking up, advance bookings this summer have gone up by about 30% compared to last year. Hitesh Shah, a businessman, said, "My family had been long planning a trip to Europe and with a weak euro, we think this is the right time to take a trip to Spain and London."
According to travel companies, in last two years, people chose to travel to Far-East countries over the US and Europe. This was largely due to devaluation of rupee as well as the currencies of some Far-East countries against the US dollar. But this year the trend has reversed. "In last one year, euro's exchange rate has fallen from Rs 82.5 to Rs 67.17. This has made the travel far cheaper," said Sanjeev Chhajer, vice-president, Cox & Kings.
"We were still making our travel plans for somewhere in Asia. But when euro crashed, we jumped at the offer and called our tour operator for bookings," said Shreeja Rajeev, a 30-year-old chartered accountant.
"The fall of euro has made travel cheaper at least by 15%-20% to Europe. Including flight tickets, whole tour cost is in affordable range," says Choksi.
"Global awareness and high disposable income has resulted in the Gujarat market accounting for nearly 24% of our outbound travel business. We have seen almost 32% of our queries have come from Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat & Baroda," said Jatinder Paul Singh, senior VP and Head - sales and distribution Leisure Travel, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd.
Travel companies are also offering packages according to the value of the euro on the day of booking.
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