26% Indians travel with families: study

The study highlighted that a new trend of travelling solo has emerged among Indians, which is quite common among the travellers of other countries.     

While the global percentage of solo travellers stood at 14%, Indians were not far behind at 12%. Also when majority travellers, across the world, said they travelled with their spouse or partner on their last trip, Indians travelled "with children" (22%) and "other family members" (26%), which was much higher than the global trend of 18% and 17% respectively.     

Breaking away from conventional ways, Indians were found to be an organised travellers as majority (92%) of them wanted to have all the basics taken care of like booking flights, arranging transit and accommodation, when planning and booking online.

The word of mouth emerged as a powerful source of information, as they seemed to be relying heavily on the opinion of other travellers, the study said.

Apart from this, Indians turned out to be tech addicted during their vacation, as 58% accessed Internet via mobile, 50% uploaded their photos to social networking sites and 44% updated their status on social network.     

"With such an optimistic outlook for their travel plans this year, travel seems to have become an integral part of the consumption basket for Indians—a change even a slow economic scenario seems unable to derail, according to the results of our survey," said Nikhil Ganju, Country Manager, TripAdvisor India.

In addition to travelling more heavily, we also seem to be turning into intrepid travellers as India features among countries that ranked 'adventure' highest as preferred type of trip, he added.

The TripBarometer by TripAdvisor was based upon an online survey conducted in December 2012 to January 2013. A total of 35,042 people participated in the online survey from 26 countries spanning seven regions.