'Having said that there is a section of people who are still going ahead and planning a holiday over the weekend. Instead of staying cooped in their homes and watching all the hype in the TV they prefer going to a quieter place and enjoy the weekend,' he added.

According to Kanjilal the most preferred destination for the three-day weekend is Shimla.

'Shimla is an old favourite when it comes to short breaks. You can see a lot of places in a short span of time. People also like to go to places like Haridwar and Rishikesh, Dehradun, Mussoorie, even Goa. One of the upcoming destinations is Lansdowne in Uttarakhand which is a three and half hour drive from Delhi,' he said.

The budget for such getaways range between Rs.4,500-6,000.

Rajiv Sharma, a tour operator here said that although he had a lot of people lining up to book short trips to nearby places for the upcoming weekend, the numbers have dipped now.

'For the last five days, the number of bookings have come down considerably, almost by 60-70 percent for the upcoming weekend. It's all because of the swine flu scare. There have been some cancellations too, but not too much,' Sharma said.

Kishore added that although the new bookings have come down, there haven't been many cancellations for the long trips and those done two-three weeks earlier.