We at Yatra.com have been observing that over the last few years, women are increasingly keen on planning holidays with their friends and this led us to start women-only packages. In addition, we also look at providing customised packages to women for travel, both within the country and abroad. We deal with women travellers of two kinds—leisure travellers and business travellers.

Among leisure travellers, we have various categories. In many cases, a group of women want to do a trip together; for example, it could be a trek or an adventure trip to the Himalayas. Women also prefer to do niche leisure trips or they might want to go for a shopping trip to Bangkok or Dubai. Simetimes, they may want to take a cruise alone.

Online portals play a major role in ensuring women’s safety and taking care of all their requirements, even if it is last minute. When planning one’s travel online, one can check the various hotels online and read their reviews and even compare and check their service providers. We also try to ensure safety of women in all possible ways. Even when women are travelling alone, we ensure that there are men along with them. We have tie-ups with reputed and certified partners who ensure that there is a safety net around women on their trips. When designing a package for women travellers, we take extra care about their accommodation. Each of the hotels is visited by our own representatives. Only a certain percentage of hotels on our list are offered to a woman traveller.

In case someone is looking for a budget hotel and we think that spending some more money will help us put her up in a safer hotel, we advise her to do that. Even corporates have woken up to this fact. They do not mind spending a bit extra over their budget to provide additional security to their female employees.

We also plan the itinerary in such a way travthat the sight-seeing trips for women are during the day, accompanied by a certified guide, and activities in the evening are mostly inside the hotel premises. Also, a trip is not just about a hotel. It involves the entire gamut of services from pick-ups to sight-seeing, etc. When a woman opts for some of the services, but prefers to do the others on her own, we encourage her to take the entire package from us, even though that means paying some more money, because then we can design for her a package without any safety loopholes. Otherwise there are some parts of her tour we have little or no control over.

After the 2012 rape incident in Delhi, women were more worried about safety and, consequently, we saw a drop in inbound single women travellers who were keen to explore India. Women were no longer feeling safe to travel alone and were looking to travel in groups of two or three. “Am I safe?” is the predominant question on their minds. Since then, although the number of women travelling alone has picked up, it has still not reached the pre-2012 levels. Business travel, however, has not dipped.

The main challenge faced by women while travelling, especially in smaller cities and towns, is the lack of proper infrastructure. Women require that the accommodation is safe and the basic amenities are of good hygiene. When I say that infrastructure is a big challenge, I do not just mean roads and accommodation. The government needs to step in have strict quality checks on tour operators, guides, taxi drivers and everyone involved in the travel business and set up proper licensing norms. This should make it more safe for women travellers. Somewhere, a mindset change is still required to ensure the safety of women, which I feel is still a long way off.

olmdesk@outlookindia.com