NEW DELHI: To resolve last connectivity issues, the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation has integrated bus booking service with its existing portal and mobile app being used for rail reservations.
At present, booking of more than 50,000 buses of the private operators and state road transport corporations is available for 22 states and three union territories.
Though trial run of the bus ticket booking was launched in January, it couldn’t garner desired results due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Corporation has added new features to attract more users.
“Travellers now can book tickets to small cities or destinations, which were not part of the network. We will be adding more destinations in future based on feedback from the passengers. Another significant feature, which IRCTC has introduced, is seat booking for intermediate point or location; short distance or a destination falling on a particular route. Earlier, the booking was allowed only from one point to another,” said IRCTC spokesperson Anand Jha.
As the Covid situation is improving and people have started travelling, he said, the number of daily bookings has also increased.
“During initial phase after the soft launch, 10-50 reservations were made. However, after the service’s full-fledged operations, around 1,000 tickets are being bought online everyday through IRCTC. Daily train booking has also improved significantly, which is 14 lakh per day.”
The IRCTC is eying 20,000 bus reservations per day. They said that gradually, the company would add more cities and states such as Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, which have been left out due to restrictions, to its network.