Homestays, 3-star hotels in demand for year-end festivities

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: With the year-end festivities around the corner, the demand for homestays and 3-star hotels have surged and contributed to almost 60% of the searches for hotels for the Christmas Holidays, reports the latest Justdial Consumer Insights.

Along with homestays and 3-star hotels, 5-star hotels, service apartments, and 4-star hotels made up the top-5 categories of hotels in demand during this holiday season. After two years of a lull due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, demand (YOY) for hotels is up by 17% and now at par with the preCovid level.

The demand for Home Stays saw a meteoric 135% jump, and for 3-star hotels rose by 18%, while that for others remained stable. While searches for Hotels soared, searches for bars, fast food, food delivery, and dhabas made up for the top-5 most searched services during this holiday and party season.

Hotels dominated with 27% of the overall searches followed by Bars (23%), Fast Food (18%), Food Delivery (17%), and Dhabas (14%). Commenting on the trends, Prasun Kumar, CMO, Justdial, said: “It is encouraging to see that the hospitality and the F&B industries are witnessing a surge in demand as we hit the phase for year-end festivities.

This rise in demand comes on the back of two years of a lull due to Covid. Some interesting trends have come to the fore like the rise in popularity of homestays over hotels so much so that demand (YOY) has gone up by 135%. In line with the rising demand, we curated the best-rated option for users for the best holiday experience.

 Demand for homestays was the highest in the popular tourist destinations of Coorg, Darjeeling, Ernakulam, Purulia, Wayanad, and Goa. Searches for star hotels in a holiday destination were the highest in Goa followed by Ernakulam, Udaipur, Jaipur, and Visakhapatnam.

For service apartments, the maximum demand was in Coimbatore, followed by Goa, Mysore, Ernakulam, and Visakhapatnam. Among Tier-I cities, demand for homestays remained the highest in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi.

For star-rated hotels, most of the demand from Tier-I cities came from Delhi and Mumbai, and Bengaluru but for service apartments demand was highest in Chennai, followed by Bengaluru and Hyderabad. With searches (YOY) for bars going up by 23%, most of this demand in Tier-I cities was generated by Mumbai and Delhi.