Chennai, a key aviation market for Scoot: Brian Torrey

Nearly 49 % of travellers from Chennai are keen to head to less-travelled destinations, the highest when compared to other south Indian cities – Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, and Visakhapatnam – a survey shows.

According to the findings of ‘South India Travel Insights 2025’, a survey commissioned by Scoot airline, a low cost subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, and done by YouGuv, covered five south Indian cities Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, and Visakhapatnam looked at travel preference, budget, factors in choosing destination and intent to travel to off beat locations among others.

One of the key findings of the survey is that travellers from South India are increasingly seeking unique and personal travel experiences; those from Chennai are specifically more eager about going to unconventional destinations. “[Locations like] Bangkok, Bali, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur will always remain popular. Now, people are looking beyond these places for other experiences. In Chennai people are more open to experimenting with new destinations,” Brian Torrey, General Manager of India and West Asia at Scoot said.

The survey indicates, Chennai travellers want to explore Krabi in Thailand, Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, Chiang Rai in Thailand, Darwin in Australia, and Cebu in Philippines.

Social media platforms (53%) and online review platforms (45%) stood as one of the major sources of inspiration driving this travel experiences for south Indian travellers, the survey said.

“People are influenced by social media. Also, we have had a high number of these people who said that they were now planning their itinerary using AI and ChatGPT. Twenty eight percent are already using Chat GPT to plan their itinerary. For a relatively new technology, it is a high number. Of course, we expect it to grow. People are looking to unlock new destinations, details [about them] and planning their itineraries,” he said.

According to the airline, in recent years, they have explored the idea of roping social media influencers in FAM trips to popularise a destination. They said, there is a lot of impact that influencers can bring, with the large following of audiences which they want to tap into.