Although the world might have witnessed the most beautiful and clear skies during the lockdown months, through their balconies, yet people are finding it hard to stay at their homes for work. The unprecedented outbreak of coronavirus and resultant pandemic have affected people’s health in unimaginable ways. To cope with the ongoing conditions and attaining mental peace, travel freaks are preferring travel locations for long stays. While the branded and luxurious hotels have been hit really hard, people are majorly opting for homestays during pandemic.
The nation witnessed a complete lockdown from 25th March to several months with announced extensions as well. In such cases, travel and hospitality industries have seen extreme and shocking shrink in the economy. After a long break, hotels across the globe are starting to reopen and are offering services of staycations where people can enjoy long stay of several weeks or even months.
Even though the hotels have started to operate and function lately, there has been a huge demand for rural homestays options. To stop the spread of coronavirus, people are choosing an isolated, independent and single occupancy stay option. If we take the example of Shimla, one of the most popular tourist destinations in India, villages and homestays are becoming travelers’ first choice. Maddening crowd is choosing to witness a secluded, safe and fascinating stay option where they can follow the requisite safety protocol as well.
The reason why people are choosing homestays rather than hotels, is that they want to stay in clean, safe and less crowded areas. “Is this place sanitized enough?” “Am I going to be safe from infection in this place?” “Is it over-crowded?” “Does this accommodation abide by all the COVID protocol and safety measures?” These are some of the questions that most travelers have asked this year and will continue to ask further. People are choosing homestays over hotels as these places do not have long standing queues for check-in and check-outs.
With these emerging trends and developments in tourism sector, Indians will be motivated towards social media trend #DekhoApnaDesh. This trend is mainly focusing on the promotion of domestic tourism so that Indian tourism sector can be brought back to normalcy. Initiatives like these will help small and local business owners to survive and support Indian economy at large.
