Indians travelling abroad paid 22% extra for last-minute flight tickets: Report

About 14 percent of Indian travellers paid an average of 22 percent more on booking their flight tickets in less than a week before this year, according to a global travel search engine KAYAK.

The analysis by KAYAK also points out that travellers in India face a risk of paying up to 33 percent more than the average cost for flights to their top destinations in 2018 by waiting until the last minute to book, Economic Times reported.

According to KAYAK, flights to Bangkok, Dubai and Bali are the top three destinations for Indian travellers. Prices for last minute booking for these spots have raised 18 percent, 22 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

Additionally, travellers witnessed at least 10 percent higher costs in last minute booking for each of the top ten most-searched places.

"With disposable incomes rising, there are more and more Indian travellers venturing overseas on holiday. In 2017, we have seen a significant percentage of Indian travellers making last minute bookings at higher than average flight prices," said the country manager India of KAYAK, Abhijit Mishra.

"In order to save on flights, planning ahead is a simple way for travellers to save money so they can put it to use in their final destination, rather than on a plane ticket," he added.

Bangkok, Dubai, Bali, Singapore, New York and Goa are the top searched destinations by Indian travellers, according to the report.

In September, reports also suggested that Indian air carriers, who have been struggling with plunging returns, claimed that the newly rolled out Goods and Services Tax (GST) could also lead to significant rise in operations costs and rise in airfares.

According to reports, airlines claim new levies under the new tax regime will load the industry with a burden of Rs 4,750 crore.

"The new levies can potentially wipe off the profits earned by airlines," said a senior airlines official.

But despite this, tax on flight tickets for the economy class was reduced from six percent to five percent under GST. However, analysts predict that prices could go up for those travelling by business class as tax rates increased from nine percent to 12 percent.