More Indians want to indulge in adventure sports: Survey

An ever-increasing number of Indians want to indulge in adventure tourism but are deterred by high costs and lack of trust in operators managing such activities in the country, a survey revealed Friday.

'Adventure Travel Survey', conducted by online travel portal TripAdvisor, highlighted the evolving trends and preferences of the Indian traveller.

According to the survey, around 46 percent respondents are willing to try out extreme adventure sports, but 51 percent of them will not participate in adventure activities managed by Indian operators and 60 percent were deterred by high costs.

"About 53 percent of the respondents claimed to be planning a holiday with the purpose of participating in an adventure activity within the next six months, with most popular activities ranging from camping and para-gliding to bungee jumping, sky diving and scuba diving," said Nikhil Ganju, country manager, TripAdvisor India.

"The perception of Indian adventure instructors/operators is abysmal among travellers with respondents showing little faith in them for organising activities with an element of risk," he added.

Cost continues to remain the biggest deterrent with 60 percent of the respondents admitted that they could never make up their mind when it came to indulging in adventure activity as it was too expensive.

Interestingly, the share of respondents who claimed to participate in extreme sports regularly or occasionally was 30 percent and an impressive 31 percent of the people, who had never participated in an extreme sport, were willing to try it out at least once.

Meanwhile, the top local destinations for adventure tourism were Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Leh and Ladakh, Rishikesh in Uttarakhand followed by Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The top international destinations were New Zealand, Australia and Thailand.