In terms of domestic business travel, India has become an anomaly while business travel recovers globally. Interestingly, according to businesses in the sector, the travel segment for meetings, events, and conferences, or MICE, is expanding more quickly than the travel segment for business. This covers both domestic travel and meetings and incentive trips overseas hosted by Indian companies.
Business travel has increased overall by about 120% between January and June 2023 and 2022, according to one company that handles large ticket conglomerates in the manufacturing, information technology, and services sectors. This increase is attributed to the high demand from corporations in Asian markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, and India.
According to Gaurav Luthra, managing director of FCM Travel in India, their meetings and events business is growing faster than the other areas of the sector. When it comes to meetings and conferences, “we have had our best year yet. We have at least doubled our revenue in this segment and seen a 60% growth when compared to the pre-covid year of 2019,” he stated.
When it comes to industries, FCM has observed that the manufacturing, BFSI, and pharmaceutical sectors have expanded significantly this year compared to 2022. However, the IT and ITeS travel industries have not yet fully recovered.
Now that India has huge convention centres, such as the recently opened International Exhibition-cum-Convention Centre (IECC) in Delhi and The Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai, major attractions like the G20 and other diplomatic events are anticipated to be held there in the upcoming years. In the previous fiscal year of FY23, the Ambani-owned venue in Mumbai, for instance, had already hosted roughly 800 events. 35% of this was made up of exhibitions, and 15% of the center’s revenue came from corporate and social events.
