Travel, hospitality see digital spends surge during festive period: PayU

Travel and hospitality companies witnessed a 105% YoY jump in digital transactions during this year's festival season attributed largely to easing of Covid-induced travel curbs and a positive impact of mass inoculation, finds a new report by online payment solutions provider PayU. 

The PayU Insights Report claimed that the total spends and total number of transactions in the travel space grew by 61% and 67% respectively vis-a-vis festive period last year. 

Hemang Dattani, Head- Data Intelligence, PayU stated, “Online shopping festivals organized by leading e-retailers, positive recovery in markets, and relaxed guidelines on travel and public events spurred digital payments across key sectors. Also, what we are seeing across categories is greater confidence in spending large amounts, which is a great sign for the economy and takes us closer to becoming digital India.”  

The report further said that Unified Payment Interface (UPI) witnessed 104% increase in total spends and 72% increase in total number of transactions. This reinforces assertions made by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which pegged the value of UPI transactions of 4.2 billion breaching US$ 100 billion in a for the first time in a month in October’21.  

PayU also claimed that it registered 8 million transactions on a single day, resulting from strong sales in retail and e-commerce channels.   

With more consumers turning to online shopping even for large ticket items, the average spends have gone up by 52% in festive season 2021 and the overall transactions handled by PayU increased by 17%, the report said.  

It further said that while Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and West Bengal drive digital payment adoption, smaller cities, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Vijaywada, Pune showed an upsurge in volumes of digital payments.  

Credit card payments also saw a 66% and 30% spike in spends and number of transactions respectively during the festive season. However, both spends and number of transactions via debit cards dropped by 13% and 18% respectively, the report said.