It is destination Bangalore for foreign travellers

It is destination Bangalore for foreign travellers
Huge Growth In International Air Traffic
Anshul Dhamija | TNN

Bangalore: Namma Bengaluru is the preferred Indian city for international travellers. The city’s phenomenal growth in international air traffic corroborates this. Going by these trends, industry observers say that Bangalore could before long become the gateway to India.
As per the air traffic figures provided by Airports Authority of India (AAI), Bangalore reported a 40% growth in international passenger traffic in the one year between September 2006 and August 2007. That’s the highest in the country and more than double the all India average growth of 16%. Hyderabad was the next highest at 19%.
Bangalore’s overall growth (including domestic and international air traffic) was 38%, the highest among all the major metros and well above the country’s average of 28%.
“Bangalore is the most exciting aviation market at the moment and in the days ahead the city will continue to see very high growth figures, of about 40%, as both domestic and international airlines look to make the city their hub,” says Kapil Kaul, CEO (India) of Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA).
TOI had reported earlier that the country’s full service carriers Air-India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher are looking to make Bangalore as the gateway city to the US.
CAPA estimates that once the new greenfield BIAL airport becomes operational next March, Bangalore would witness phenomenal passenger growth ranging between 40% and 50%.
While the new airport would double the capacity of passenger traffic to 12 million per annum, 20 new international carriers are expected to fly into the city from the current six to seven.
In the last eighteen months, carriers such as Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, Malaysian Airlines, Lufthansa and Air France have increased their total seat capacity to the city. Singapore Airlines now operates 2,104 seats in a week between Bangalore and Singapore, up 576 seats from March this year.
“From next week we will be increasing our total seat capacity by 30 per cent by adding extra flights,” says Louis Arul, manager (Karnataka), Singapore Airlines.
Mohan Kumar, GM of Taj Properties, Bangalore, says the city has taken over from Chennai as the “gateway to the South”. He adds that sectors like education, medical tourism and spa are driving the growth of foreign traffic into the city in addition to the IT industry. Bangalore’s real estate mart has also been attracting a lot of NRI attention.