Mumbai: Two long weekends, two festivals and now two airports; Mumbai travellers have plenty of reasons to plan a short getaway this August. With Raksha Bandhan and Janmashtami falling on Fridays a week apart, demand for air travel has gone up, but fares vary sharply depending on the destination. While the addition of Navi Mumbai airport has brought some relief on popular routes such as Goa, travellers flying to destinations with fewer frequencies, including pilgrimage centres, are facing steep fares.For instance, return airfare to Ayodhya for travel midweek starts at Rs 15,000, but for Raksha Bandhan weekend, the cheapest return fare is Rs 24,000 on flights via Delhi. Airfares to Agra are sky high already, though Janmashtami is about 12 days away. To most destinations, airfares to/from Navi Mumbai airport are cheaper by a few thousand rupees than those from Mumbai airport. However, the high cost of road transport to and from the new airport would make it unattractive, especially to solo travellers. The usual warning stays; most travel portals throw up Navi Mumbai (NMI) flight ticket options as well, even when the “BOM” option is selected, so travellers need to be careful when booking tickets.For Onam too, the new airport has added capacity on Kerala routes, helping keep fares from rising as sharply as in previous years. Pallavi Saxena of Cleartrip said that Bengaluru is the biggest source market for Kerala for both bus and air travel, followed by Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Within Kerala, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram were the most booked destinations via flights.As for Raksha Bandhan, Lucknow recorded a 96% YoY rise in air bookings, followed by Bhopal at 86%, Indore at 82%, Raipur at 75% and Patna at 58%, said Saxena. While these indicated people travelling to their hometowns, there was also a parallel leisure trend with Delhi and Udaipur recording an 83% YoY rise in hotel bookings, while in the South, Hyderabad and Bengaluru remained the most booked hotel destinations, both recording triple-digit YoY growth. A spokesperson for the online travel portal, Agoda, said, for the Rakshabandhan long weekend, Goa, Mumbai and Puri emerged as the top three most searched domestic destinations. “Beyond the top three, Ooty, Munnar, Lonavala and Varanasi also feature in the domestic top 15, spanning traveller interest across monsoon-friendly hill escapes and spiritual ghats,” the spokesperson said, adding the results were based on accommodation searches made between May 1 and July 31, 2026, for the coming two long weekends.For the Janmashtami long weekend, Goa again led, but it was followed by Udaipur and Mumbai. The wider domestic top 15 included destinations like Puducherry, Chennai, Jaipur and Leh. Gaurav Malik of Agoda, said: “Festive long weekends continue to be an important opportunity for Indian travellers to take a break without extended time away from work. This year’s search patterns reflect a growing appetite for varied travel experiences, from beach holidays, cultural destinations and nature escapes within India to international city breaks across Asia and beyond.”
