Half and half make more than one!- Vietnam travel

An interesting aspect we noticed in Hanoi. We went for lunch at a Japanese restaurant in the Lotte Center in Hanoi; mostly pizzas are shared , or by slice ( there was an exception to this that we got in Switzerland- but later on that). This time, there was an option to make a full dish with two half pizza of different types. That was good - allowed us to try two options in one dish! Wish more restaurants do this. 

As far as the Switzerland issue goes, in Zermatt, the restaurant near the railway station made a pointed statement to us " no sharing". That may be the culture there, we don't know, as we wouldn't be there long enough, but that left a rough edge to an otherwise nice trip. 

The saddest part is the service charge of Euro 2 for serving tap water. On inquiry, we were told that it costs that much for the server to serve the water, which is essentially free from the tap (and not bottled which I understand would have a cost). This is such a contrast from India, which is supposed to be a poor country, where even the smallest restaurant or roadside eatery will serve water glasses for free. Something to understand, when we tend to play down India or play up the first world! 

Business of Tourism : Indian Travel industry poised to boom!

India's second largest Online Travel Agent (OTA), EaseMytrip ( www.easemytrip.com) put out some interesting data points in its investor presentation May 24 2024.  

Source : Easemytrip investor ppt, slide 21, May 24 2025

Briefly, it shows how India , and Indian travelers are set to be key drivers of domestic and international tourism. 

The INR values themselves for the overall travel market are growing well : from INR 27,700crore in 2023Estimated to INR 40,400 crore Estimated in 2027. Within that number, air travel is estimated at 15% growth, on the back of new airports, planes, and generally better affordability. 

The key is the online market, whose spread, availability and convenience has impacts on many industries, not least travel itself which it will facilitate growing. Its expected to go from INR 18500 crore to INR 29800 crore from 2023 to 2027 E. That's massive growth, underlined by hotels, transport, F&B. It also suggests a strategy marketing - almost every travel player has migrated big time from print ( at one time the primary medium for advertising) to digital, since the chain from idea to execution is seamless and information for the same is easily available real time. 

These numbers also show international players like airlines and tourism boards an early glimpse of the future. 

There were 22.6 million Indian Nationals Departures (IND) as per the ministry of tourism, and 98% went by air. These are good numbers for a tourism destination, and the growth of internet, affordability, smart phones and easier visa regimes can only drive more growth.

Interestingly, Easemytrip said in their analyst call on May 24 2024 that they have adopted 4 heritage  landmarks for maintenance under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Adopt a Heritage 2.0 program: The Qutub Minar,  Delhi; The Konark Sun temple, Agra Fort, and Western group of temples in Khajuraho. Totally, these get over 6 mn visitors annually, not a bad OTS ( Opportunity to see), and may be even get business! 

The other aspect they seem to be doing is to train over 1.8 cr didis (women) in rural areas to use the app and book tickets. Even if 10% of these start using it regularly, it will open up a flood of travel bookings. 

Hopefully, the company will follow thru on these, and not just see it as PR; should be interesting to see if they declare progress on these in future investor calls. 

Ignore India at your own peril! 

Business of Tourism : Travel apps need to better their game ! ( Deceptive Patterns research by Conscious Patterns , August 2024)

ASCI Academy (Advertising and Standards Council of India) and Parallel (a product design studio in Bengaluru) came up with some very interesting research on apps and their trade practices in August 2024. 

They studied 9 industries, 12000 screens and 53 apps. One of the industries, of our interest here, is also travel. They defined and studied 12 “deceptive patterns” – practices designed to get users to undertake actions or data processing that they did not intend. 

Travel apps used 9 out of 12 "deceptive patterns" . This is important to understand , because these apps are actually very useful and have become defacto go-to gateways for travel, tourism, holidays and transport. 

Even more crucial to note as ASCI -Parallel do in their research paper -  over 751 million users are online in India, and quite unknowingly, share massive data with anyone who asks!

What are these Deceptive Patterns? Very interesting definitions, and in many cases, are very intuitive too. We have all experienced these at one time or another, on apps and websites.

Deceptive patterns defined:

• 1.     Privacy deception:  getting you to share more info that is needed or intended.  (79% use this)
• 2.      Interface interference: highlighting some interface only, misdirection. (45%)
• 3.      Drip pricing: revealing additional fees slowly thru the process (43%)
• 4.      False urgency: creating artificial pressure of FOMO (32%)
• 5.      Nagging: constant pop ups (15%)
• 6.      Bait and switch – advertise something, serve something else. (13%)
• 7.      Basket Sneaking – add unwanted costs (donations etc)  (13%)
• 8.      Forced action – force users to do an action (make accounts etc) (11%)
• 9.      Confirm sharing – use social pressure to complete an action ( 8%)
• 10  Subscription trap -make cancellation difficult of a subscription (2% )
• 11. Trick question – vague language (2%)
• 12 .Disguised ads – blend with editorial (0%).

They surveyed 53 apps. This is the summary:

• 1.      52 out of 53 apps exhibited at least one deceptive patterns (“DP”).
• 2.      90% of apps showed between 1-4 DP.
• 3.      On an average, there were 2.7 DP per app.
• 4.      One app, had as many as 23 DP instances!
• 5.      Privacy deception accounted for 24% of total occurrences
• 6.      79% of all apps showed privacy deception. They really want your data!
• 7.      The travel apps use 9 out of 12 deceptive patterns – that’s a lot !
• 8.      Delivery and logistics used 8- very close behind.
• 9.      All 9 ecommerce apps made it very difficult to delete your account.

Travel apps use many deceptive patterns

One of the many industries they surveyed was travel and tourism. In this, they checked the apps of the leading players – EasemyTrip, Agoda, goibibo, yatra, makemytrip, cleartrip, redbus, and booking.com.

The list of DP that the travel trade uses, is not surprising, when you sit back and think- almost every DP is used in some manner or intensity. Eg- just a few that we all can relate to:

1.      Drip pricing (33% of all apps studied) – add on costs till final cost is something else !

2.      Confirm sharing – pressurize to get advantage of some deal at a point in the booking.

3.      Nagging – pop ups keep pressurizing you to take an action .

 These practices essentially underline the importance of data- the new black gold! Data like this allows targeted marketing and selling, reduces marketing and sales costs, and potentially provides a database for cross selling. Its inevitable that some data needs to shared to use services- just be aware of what exactly needs to be shared! 

After all, caveat emptor! 

Read the research on : https://www.consciouspatterns.in/research-findings

Business of Tourism : Extent of tourism in numbers - the T/P Ratio

Overtourism is the current rage in the travel, tourism, government and social circles. There are cities being overwhelmed by visitors in particular months and empty in others; there are protests and water being squirted over tourists ( which is sad because tourists cant be blamed for local policies that enable them to arrive!).

That said , I thought it would be interesting to gauge from numbers exactly how bad is the problem of over tourism. I compiled a few numbers (see table) from various sources - the Ministry of Tourism India (2022 data) , UN tourism site, Euromonitor, Statista, ET, TOI, The Guardian, CNN and a few others). 

The "T/P ratio" is essentially simply Tourist- to- Population ratio. Just my way to grasp the scale of the issue. 

Not surprisingly, western Europe has some T/P  ratios that could be called alarming. The point here is that not all these millions are leisure travelers. Quite a large component will be business arrivals too. Still, the numbers are huge in already huge cities. Istanbul, for example, gets 25% more visitors thru its gates in a year than its resident population. London, nearly 2x, and Barcelona, the current hot topic, 37 % more than its population. These are serious enough "overruns" to stress out people, resources like water and sanitation, as well as transport. ( populations are measured differently in different cities - some take in only metro city areas; some the wider metro area including suburbs, but the core purpose of the analysis remains good). 

numbers in millions.
Sources: Euromonitor, Statista,
WTTO, UN Tourism Dashboard, media reports,
TOI, ET, Guardian, CNN

India : big on population, low on tourism

Ironically, in the second half of the table, you can see how under-developed India is on the tourism scale. India gets less than 1.7% of global tourism, and its FTA (Foreign Tourist Arrivals) are about 9 mn. Basically, the whole, huge subcontinent of India , one of the oldest and most diverse cultures on Earth, gets less tourist arrivals than any one of the cities in the table! 

India has tremendous potential for tourism - both domestic and international. There are some clear concerns, but they pertain to infrastructure, costs, general perception of safety, and that India is destination by itself requiring much time and planning). 

There's essentially no concern on overtourism for India! As it is, Indian cities are densely populated. A few million more may not even be noticed! 

Business of Tourism : What enables over tourism?

Over tourism remains a topic of great debate. in an earlier post, I tried to understand what could be done about it (taxes, phase out, new destinations and so on) .  Here, I wanted to explore another closely related issue : permissions and approvals.

Its easy and convenient to say tourists mess up , clog up and in general ruin the place.  That in itself is a broad generalization and not always true. 

But how and what enabled so many to visit so many areas for so many days? 

Some key factors: local authorities, logistics and prosperity.  

To start with, isn't it local authorities ( municipalities, state governments and national ministries) who allow the proliferation of short stay apartments? 

How does a tourist enable / force / cause flats or apartments to be converted into short stay tourism accommodation without active support,  frame work and planning by landlords and city authorities? 

Does a tourist have any say in housing or zoning or public transport policies of the destination? Clearly, no. 

In all the arguments raging across media, I don't find much debate on the role of authorities in allowing the shift of housing for locals into short stay for tourists (Barcelona did say they would ban all short stays, but after 4 years).  They welcomed the money that came in ( both local landlords who rented out and governments who got taxes and income).  

But perhaps it went overboard?

No one fault can be pinpointed here - it is the responsibility of authorities to grow their economies, and they simply used one economic lever. But then to turn around and blame transient visitors  almost entirely for this problem is a bit rich. Local protestors would be aware of this. Surely they would be asking hard questions of their administrators. 

The other enabler is of course, logistics or access. The expansion of low cost airlines suddenly opened up new destinations otherwise out of budget. Here again, landing / docking rights are the economic assets of the destination-its entirely there prerogative to control them. The tricky balance is to get more money in, without messing up the works- economic, cultural, business. 

The third enabler is the growing prosperity of the middle classes elsewhere in the world that puts more money and enables them to travel, supported by vastly expanded air, sea and road links. In India, at least, foreign travel is no longer a luxury, The moment the young people have excess funds and/ time, they will travel. Its just part of being the new Global Indian culture and imagery that has crystalized over the past decade. And India isnt even the largest source markets for many tourism-troubled destinations- not yet. 

Just look at India only (not even that other big source market - China) . 1400 mn people- of which the middle class would be 500mn. To put that into perspective- that would be more than the population of Scandinavia and most European countries, and quite big chunks of S/ S E Asia as well! Even if 10% of these 500mn are able to travel, that's 50mn. Europe holds the pride of place for every Indian- and even within Europe, certain destinations are always top of the list- Switzerland, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy for sure, Next layer for the more discerning would be eastern and central Europe, and for the jaded Indian, Scandinavia/ Iceland. 

Another interesting aspect is FOMO - the fear of missing out in travel and tourism. Just consider India again. With 65% of its population below 30 years and infrastructure still shoddy for tourism, the longing for the "first world lifestyle" means that a whole mass of people are traveling- and putting on social media that " they made it" . That perfect insta photo/ that perfect facebook post. It all adds to the allure of travel. Its a good thing in many ways for Indians - exposure, style, perspective, confidence. But only if done correctly.

The fourth enabler I would say are the investments into the tourism infrastructure by a lot of players, from hotels, to transport, to F&B and governments. The rapid expansion of chain hotels and Air B&B stays opened up vast accommodation options and allowed more stays for longer. Its a matter of another debate if hotels are better for a city or short stay rentals. Hotels are usually more expensive but offer a control point for the destination. 

In sum, it was a perfect conjunction of circumstances and enablers that drove excessive tourism numbers. There are hard solutions in hand, and some soft, long term. But perhaps the travel industry will find its right, if an uneasy and flexible, balance sooner than later!