Flight fares to India to stay high on strong demand

Despite Gulf and Indian carriers increasing capacity and routes between the two regions, fares are unlikely to be discounted while demand for seats remains high, Arabian Business has learnt. According to the new Visa Global Travel Intentions Survey 2011, India was voted one of the top global destinations for travellers from the UAE this year and continues to be popular with travelers in the Gulf. "India is consistently popular with people living in the UAE, both because it is home to a large population of expatriate Indians who come to work here in the UAE, but also because of its relatively close proximity, extensive and good value travel links," said Kamran Siddiqi, general manager for Visa Middle East. Flag carrier Air India already operates around 53 weekly flights to Dubai and its low-fare unit Air India Express operates 54 weekly flights. Other carriers in the Gulf and India are also looking to tap in the lucrative market. Qatar Airways said India would be one of its key growth markets in 2011 and recently launched a daily service to Kolkata, and already operates 95 flights a week to 12 other Indian cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Goa. India’s largest low-cost carrier IndiGo has also announced routes between Dubai and New Delhi and Dubai and Mumbai. Jet Airways, Air Arabia, flydubai and Jazeera Airways are also eyeing expansion. Travel agents say this growth was long overdue and prices are unlikely to decrease any time soon as demand for seats still remains extremely high.  “I know that the Indian carriers as well as GCC based carriers and LCC’s are increasing their routes to India but that is just to serve a demand which has been long undersupplied,” said Basel Abu Alrub, managing partner of Utravel in Dubai.  “I expect that airlines will try to hold their rates as much as possible until there is a clear oversupply in the market. But as of now, flights are overbooked to/from India all the time and so increasing the routes to India will only serve in meeting the explosive demand and not diluting the market with empty seats,” he added. This was echoed by Sunil D'souza, regional travel director at Kanoo Travel for the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Iraq and Afghanistan, who said flights to and from India were routinely full or are operating with high capacity. “Airline offers/prices are yo-yoing based on supply and demand equation to the Indian sub-continent. The traffic scenario to India is always on the higher percentage at any given day/week/month. Hence the percentage of reduction in fares is minimal and seasonal,” he added.