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Religious travel drives 48% of India’s overnight trips; medical trips lead spending
Our read
India’s tourism-led retail upside will be won less by luxury destination spending and more by value-led, high-frequency retail formats positioned around pilgrimage corridors, medical hubs and regional transit nodes.
For operators
Prioritize pilgrimage corridors and medical hubs with transit-adjacent formats, localized assortments and peak-demand staffing, while using same-day shopping trips to strengthen destination-retail offers.
Watch
MoSPI updates on overnight-trip volumes, purpose mix and average spending by state.
The report,
MoSPI’s domestic tourism survey shows religious travel drives 48% of Indian overnight trips, while medical travel has the highest spend. Tamil Nadu leads holiday travel, and shopping is a major purpose of same-day trips, offering demand signals for travel, hospitality and destination retail.
- Pilgrimage/religious share of overnight trips, 2025-2648%
- Health/medical share of overnight trips, 2025-2630%
- Holiday share of overnight trips, 2025-2622%
Demand data
From the report. Source details below
| 10 crore estimated overnight trips in | 2025-26 |
|---|---|
| 48% of overnight trips were pilgrimage/religious; 30% health/medical; | 22% holidays |
| Average medical-trip spend: | Rs 32,167; urban Rs 41,649; rural Rs 29,454 |
| Average holiday-trip spend: | Rs 11,723; religious-trip spend: Rs 7,694 |
| 58% of households made a same-day trip in the prior | 30 days |
Also in the report
- Tamil Nadu accounted for 23.8% of holiday overnight trips
- Shopping and social purposes accounted for nearly 60% of same-day trips
What it says about consumers
Target partnerships or acquisitions spanning pilgrimage travel services, hospital-adjacent retail and transit-commerce platforms to capture both high-frequency footfall and higher-value medical-travel demand.
Next data points
- Pilgrimage calendar dates, major temple corridor openings, religious-event crowd caps and rail special-train announcements.
- Hospital capacity expansion, medical-tourism visa policy changes and growth in tertiary-care clusters.
- Railway station redevelopment, new expressways, airport routes and intercity bus-terminal upgrades near destination markets.
- Hotel occupancy and room-rate spikes in pilgrimage towns and hospital districts.
- Weekend versus weekday footfall, conversion and basket-size changes at stores near transit and destination nodes.
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- State restrictions on vendor activity, traffic access, alcohol, operating hours or crowd management around religious sites.
Likely next moves
Our read of what comes next — analysis, not reported by the source.
- Map store expansion and temporary-format opportunities within major pilgrimage circuits, hospital districts, railway junctions and intercity bus hubs.
- Build pilgrimage-specific assortments: value apparel, footwear, rain and sun protection, travel-size FMCG, power banks, packaged food, hydration, devotional products and family bundles.
- Use festival, darshan-calendar and long-weekend demand forecasts to pre-position inventory, extend operating hours and deploy pop-up counters.
- Develop hospital-zone propositions combining pharmacy adjacency, attendant meal plans, ready-to-eat staples, affordable lodging tie-ups and multilingual customer support.
- Target same-day shoppers with regional mall events, outlet promotions, family dining bundles, click-and-collect and last-mile transport incentives.
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- Track travel-origin data to localize pricing, signage, payment options and assortment for high-frequency visitor states.
The counter-case
The case against this reading — not reported by the source.
Trip purpose does not automatically translate into monetizable retail demand: pilgrims are often budget-constrained, spend within temple ecosystems, and travel in seasonal surges; medical travelers prioritize treatment and accommodation over discretionary shopping. Same-day shopping and social trips may reflect routine local mobility rather than incremental destination retail footfall.