I have been traveling across the country so have not been able update the blog...
But as they say traveling itself can a great learning experience. I find it more exciting while traveling to places where one cannot speak the local language, because that is when you can see how tourist friendly people truly are... Anyway I thought of sharing with you the impact that online ticketing has had one travel.
Maybe one initiative which has benefited most of us who travel long distances is the e-ticketing facility provided by Indian Railways, through IRCTC. I have written about it earlier also, but then every time I use it i appreciate it even better and it is expected that e-ticketing might touch even 50% of overall ticketing very soon!!!!!!!!!
I think the first step towards this was the computerization of ticketing , because I still remember in our school days when we use to travel between Delhi to Mangalore we had to send a person to Mangalore Railway station to book the return tickets for us.
Today the convenience of e-ticketing is not just for trains one can book tickets online for buses, not just the state transport but private buses too through a service called redbus.in. The experience of booking through both state transport (KSRTC) and redbus.in has been very good.
So it is not difficult to understand why online travel contributes close to 60% of the overall ecom business in India, and it is only going to grow...
Sir
ReplyDeleteI happen to be a ardent fan of the IRCTC and just recently even saw online booking for some travels even in Andhra Pradesh! Was Amazed!
Nice to see you blogging again, and also tweeting!
The biggest problem of other online travel sites besides IRCTC is that: there are multiple bookings for the same seat!!! Many people face this problem. They book the tickets through different channels: dealers, direct agents and online, so in the end there are more tickets sold than available :D
ReplyDeleteThis is the problem that plagues "redbus".
Definitely IRCTC is a good way to book tickets. In fact their response to email queries is faster than those of credit card firms. IRCTC however has to increase its acceptance of debit cards of all nationalized banks. Also technical commumication network fails sometimes.
ReplyDeleteKarnataka SRTC (KSRTC) is miles ahead in using internet for advance reservation which works on a franchisee model.
@Varun, yes online ticketing has come to age in India, making our life easy
ReplyDelete@Ankush, I have traveled a lot throu IRCTC and luckily am yet to face the problem of multiple bookings, hopefully they should be able to sort out the issue soon :)
@suresh, yes KRSTC franchisee model is better, and IRCTC is also planning to increase its reach through the franchisee route, but currently the internet based services IRCTC is far superior to KSRTC.
Yes. This is really true. Online ticket bookings are made our travel so easy. Thank you for sharing this great article. Looking for book your bus and air tickets visit
ReplyDeleteBus Ticket Booking Online
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