Now airlines are gearing up to relieve pent-up demand, as the government has eased rules that previously required aircrew to wear full sets of protective gears on flights and prevented security personnel at airports from carrying out pat-down searches. A recent survey by travel website Agoda found that 39 per cent of Indians were expecting to travel internationally this year.

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India’s aviation market was the fastest-growing in the world before Covid-19, and the government is expecting local passenger traffic to surpass pre-pandemic levels of around 415,000 travellers per day within the next 12 months.

Internationally, Dubai-based airline Emirates has said it will resume from Friday the 170 weekly flights it operated to nine Indian cities pre-pandemic, while UK-based Virgin Atlantic has announced a second daily flight connecting New Delhi to London starting June 1 in addition to its Mumbai-London service.

Where are Indians headed?

Luxury resort chain Soneva, which also has properties in Thailand, has seen revenues from its Indian guests increase “by a factor of six” at two of its Maldives locations since 2019, said Carissa Nimah, Soneva’s chief commercial officer.

“India has become one of our top four source markets,” she said. “We’ve also recently relaxed our arrivals protocols across our resorts, with no more mandatory PCR testing for guests at Soneva Fushi or Soneva Jani.”

Soneva’s regular guests include Bollywood stars such as Sonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Katrina Kaif and Varun Dhawan, who can enjoy the VIP treatment at the Maldives resorts’ 11 dining options helmed by Michelin-starred guest chefs.

Located in a Unesco biosphere reserve, the resorts’ nature-inspired architecture, private water villas and island villas come paired with pristine beaches and open-air bathrooms that extend into private gardens. Soneva Fushi is also set to host an international leg of the Jaipur Literature Festival in May, which is expected to draw more guests, Nimah said.

Shreenathji Holidays, a leading Indian travel firm, said in a statement that its five-day luxury packages to Dubai that include stays at five-star hotels and above were “flying off the shelves like hot cakes”.

“We’re in the midst of catering to a huge pent up demand among Indians for luxury travel,” it said. “No sooner do we launch a package, than within minutes our website crashes. We’re already recording 70 per cent higher sales than the pre-pandemic era.”

Doubts, unease

Despite the excitement over luxury travel, however, many in India still have reservations about heading overseas – and about foreigners visiting the country, good as that may be for the economy. Local Circles, which styles itself as India’s No 1 social media platform for discussions and problem solving, said a survey it conducted showed that only one-in-four Indians supported the government’s decision to restart commercial international flights.

“The survey revealed that 69 per cent Indians were sceptical about the move due to the health risk outbound Indian tourists may pose to others upon return,” a spokesman said. “A majority said that the government should only start travel from countries which have a test positivity rate of less than 5 per cent.”

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For Subhash Thakur, a Delhi-based entrepreneur, there is too much hype surrounding the restart of international travel.

“I think we should all calm down, these destinations aren’t going anywhere,” said the 53-year-old. “Why not wait some more time and avoid endangering the health of others by rushing off to these fancy destinations, only to brag about it on Instagram, and then come back and infect others? Haven’t we already paid a high enough price for our lack of caution?”