Bhubaneswar, Nov. 21: A large number of people are calling off their travel plans to avoid hassles of money transactions following Centre's scrapping high currency notes.

Though this is a peak travel season, local tour operators are complaining of poor business.

"We are spending most of our time cancelling bookings. About 15 bookings have been cancelled this week. If this continues till the end of this year, we will suffer huge losses," said Subrat Prusty, owner of Fun Trips based in Nayapalli.

Many of those who wanted to go on a holiday were warned by their friends to postpone their plans.

"My aunt and her family were on their way from Visakhapatnam to Kolkata when the demonetisation announcement was made. They had to go without food throughout the journey. They couldn't even buy water. We will have to travel with children, so, we don't want to take any chance," said 29-year-old homemaker Ajanta Jena.

While holiday plans have come to a standstill, travel agents are trying to make up for the loss through business trips.

"Very few booking are made by tourists these days. So, we are banking on flight and hotel bookings by those who are going on official tours. But, one hardly gets any profit from these bookings," said Partha Samal, a tour operator from Patia.

Samal said both national and international travel bookings have come to a standstill.

"No fresh bookings have been made this month. Singapore and Bangkok are the most preferred foreign destinations, but people are also avoiding foreign trips," he said.

Tourist inflow in the state has been hit as well. A number of bookings at the top hotels in the city have been cancelled.

"By the end of October, almost 60 per cent of our rooms were booked till December. After the announcement, many have cancelled their bookings. Only 20 per cent of the bookings persists," said a hotel manager in Jaydev Vihar.

The state had witnessed low tourist inflow last year despite the Nabakalebar festival, tour operators feel this year the situation will be no better.

"There has been highs and lows in the tourism industry since the past few years and present cash crunch has added to the woes. Last year, we had so many foreigners who had queries about local places such as Puri and Raghurajpur. We received 50 calls in a week, buy this time we got only 10 calls in the past week," said Sanjib Kumar, owner of a travel company based in Rasulgarh.