Coronavirus pandemic | 52% of Indians scrap summer travel plans, Local Circles-Moneycontrol survey reveals

Around 52 percent of Indians have cancelled their summer travel plans due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a survey.

The survey, which took responses from 22,000 people from 140 districts, was conducted by social media platform Local Circles, in collaboration with Moneycontrol.

Participants were asked questions about their travel plans from March- June 2020, which is a popular travel season for families since schools are closed.

Out of respondents, 38 percent said they paid cancellation charges to both websites/travel agents and airlines/railways while 9 percent paid the penalty only to airlines/railways. Around 5 percent paid the fees only to the websites or travel agents.

In India, 110 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection and two deaths have been reported so far. Like several other countries, India has issued a travel advisory.

Individuals and families are becoming more cautious about their travel plans over the next few months. The survey said 54 percent of the respondents were cautious about travelling this summer, as against 41 percent when the survey was conducted in February 2020.

Around 34 percent of the respondents said they had not booked tickets and would do so only after having watched the situation. Some participants (20 percent) said they had made bookings but might cancel based on the situation.

Several participants also said they would cancel domestic and international business travel. Around 20 percent said they would cancel domestic and international plans while 28 percent said they would cancel international travel only.

"The big worry that people of India have is the community transmission, something that researchers from around the world have approximate at 10 percent of the total infections and more common in places like Wuhan, South Korea, Iran, Italy etc," the survey said.

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