We often heard this term everywhere in world, “India is the future of the world” and many of us do agree with it. They are the driving force behind everything Soft the world is using. Very soon they will take over China which is thriving upon everything Hard.
When it comes to travel, Indians are traveling like never before! They are using planes even for meager distance of 250 km (Chandigarh – New Delhi), while in Scandinavia we drive all the way from Copenhagen to Odense by car everyday to and fro. One of my colleague used to drive everyday for our office in Farsø from Aarhus. In India if you are working that far from your hometown than they either move to that particular city along with their family or rent an apartment there and visit their home during weekends. It means than India is very cheap for traveling? One can say it is, but everything is so confusing that you will never know whether you are paying less or higher price for your travel. For Instance if you fly for a particular date from New Delhi to Goa (almost 2000 km), it will cost you around SEK 1068 – 2182 out of more than 108 flights flying daily to famous beach destination. An Air Conditioned Train journey costs SEK 200.00 for the same journey but it is very difficult task to get this ticket by any means. Train travel in India is bookable online but unscrupulous travel agents are abusing the online booking system of Indian Railways hence making life miserable for genuine travelers, Indians or foreigners. So we strike out train option for this itinerary and use flight option instead which is the last option available. As I told you above that there are more than 100 flights available in a single day for this itinerary with different price tags.
An average traveler will try to buy the cheapest price available (SEK 1068.00) for this journey which is natural phenomenon around the world. There are several state of the art flight comparison sites in India for instant flight bookings and whole India swear by these sites. Yatra has become household name in India since it was started in year 2002. There are few bigger names in this category such as Makemytrip, Cleartrip, goibibo and just landed Indian versions of Expedia and Travelocity. Our little exercise starts here! We will compare prices from three major flight comparison sites i.e., Yatra, Makemytrip and Cleartrip (most Indians just use any one of these sites and done). Result? All same with slight difference of SEK 1 or 2! My advice for all of you traveling to India is to know their domestic airlines properly. There are several Low Cost Carriers (LCC) in India such as Indigo, Goair, Spicejet, and JetLite. DO NOT USE these LCCs at all, try instead airlines such as Jet Airways, Air India, Kingfisher which offers refundable fares, Meal and baggage up to 20 Kilos while LCCs will charge you for meal (even water), Baggage and their fares are non-refundable. All LCCs are facing charges of unfair practice in civil courts all over India. In some cases they just abandoned passengers without any meal and water for more than 48 hours and no refund in case of flight cancellations.
Bottom-line is don’t go for cheap fares offered by Low Cost Carriers and choose National Carrier like Air India or other players such as Kingfisher and Jet Airways. In your search results you must’ve noticed that Air India flight to Goa is cheaper than of Indigo Air, why? This is the confusion part I was talking about in the beginning. I was talking to one of the frequent flyer about the same thing and he told me that Indian travelers prefers low-cost carriers because they are unaware of the hidden charges involved in these websites which never tell them about the details such as baggage allowed in flight or whether the airline provides meals or not. When people start buying cheapest fare available on a particular airline, flight comparison sites push the panic button due to high demand for particular flight and their prices start going up as availability of seats shrinks and we end up paying too much for Low cost carrier even.
So what to do than? Well, believe it or not, USE A TRAVEL AGENT, which most Indians don’t do and they face lots of trouble at the hands of these flight comparison sites and hidden charges of low-cost carriers. Flight comparison sites often breaks down due to heavy traffic on their sites especially when customer is paying for the itinerary thus resulting in disaster for the travelers. Here are the few examples of ordeals faced by travelers at the hands of a major flight comparison site. A travel agent will save you from such ordeals in a foreign land where a refund takes more than 21 days and that too after long battle. You’ll be given information about the facilities provided by the airline you are flying with and any hidden charges. In case of sudden change in travel plans, it is always easy to get refund from a travel agent.
I often found Indian travel agents very friendly and caring, some of them will even come to fetch you from Railway Station or Airport without even hoping for any monitory gain. Use them while in India which most of Indians never do.
