MakeMyTrip urges India and Sri Lanka to unlock next wave of travel growth
Daily FT: MakeMyTrip Chief Commercial Officer – Holidays and Experiences Jasmeet Singh last week called for stronger strategic collaboration between Sri Lanka and India’s largest online travel platform to accelerate tourism growth, noting that Sri Lanka has “all the right building blocks” to scale its presence in the world’s fastest-growing outbound travel market.
Speaking at the India–Sri Lanka Tourism Connect forum titled “From the Ganges to the Kelani: A Voyage of Friendship and Discovery”, Singh revealed that Sri Lanka is ranked fifth largest search destination on MakeMyTrip’s two major platforms, indicating strong demand potential.
However, he cautioned that Sri Lanka’s digital presence remains fragmented.
“If you search on Instagram or TikTok for Sri Lanka, you don’t get enough structured information. The content exists, but it is scattered. Bringing all of it together can significantly shift the needle,” he said.
Singh asserted that awareness and engagement must go hand-in-hand. MakeMyTrip’s data-driven personalisation engine, built over years of analysing user journeys can help identify which travellers should be targeted with Sri Lanka content, when, and on which channel.
“Every two hours, user preferences change on our platform. But if Sri Lanka feeds us the right content, we know exactly whom to show it to and how to convert that into bookings,” he added.
Singh outlined several trends shaping India’s rapidly expanding international travel demand. “By 2030, India is expected to generate 50 million outbound travellers annually, with 70% opting for short-haul destinations within roughly five hours of flying time. This places Sri Lanka in a prime position,” he said.
Equally significant are demographic shifts where 50% of India’s international travellers are Millennials and Gen Z, who increasingly choose destinations based on trending content on Instagram or TikTok rather than traditional brochures. “People are now searching for experiences first, and then choosing the destination,” he noted, citing Japan’s surge in Indian arrivals driven by social-media fascination with cherry blossoms.
Singh also identified four fast-growing consumer cohorts on the platform. Premium travellers, who book rooms averaging above $ 150 per night and now account for 30% of outbound international bookings; pilgrimage and spiritual travellers, a segment powering 60% of domestic travel in India and expanding rapidly internationally; experience-seekers, whose decisions are driven by trending activities rather than geography and last-minute travellers, with 50% of domestic room nights booked within three days and 33% of air tickets booked within a week.
“All these cohorts are growing and Sri Lanka fits every single one of them,” he said, noting that the island’s ability to offer beaches, mountains, cloud forests and ancient heritage sites within a few hours’ drive makes it ‘uniquely appealing’ to diverse Indian travel personas.
OSL take:
While Sri Lanka’s tourism industry is on a steady growth path, India is among the top countries where foreign tourists to Sri Lanka are concerned. Given a shared culture and heritage, tourists from India visit Sri Lanka for many reasons, which range from religious and cultural tourism to adventure tourism and ecotourism. With Sri Lankan authorities continuing to explore new tourism concepts to be promoted among foreign tourists to the country, Sri Lanka and India could also look at ways to attract a diverse group of Indian travelers to Sri Lanka. While Sri Lanka’s expanding tourism industry has opened many business/investment opportunities in the industry and related sectors, a targeted expansion aimed at Indian tourists could further expand these opportunities. Given the increasing business potential in Sri Lanka’s tourism industry and related sectors as well as the further increase in foreign travelers to the country, foreign businesses/investors could confidently explore the expanding business/investment opportunities in the industry. Indian business/investors in the leisure and hospitality business could also look at exploiting the emerging opportunities in Sri Lanka’s tourism industry and related sectors while also looking at expanding operations through local collaborations in Sri Lanka.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/20251208/Z_3 |