New Delhi: After clocking the highest-ever booking of 450,000 daily earlier this year, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation is tying up with airlines to sell air tickets through its portal.
Though it started booking airline tickets last year, albeit in a small way, it is now taking seat blocks from airlines to be marketed and sold through its portal. “We will expand our airline ticket booking operations by offering corporate travel and also provide a complete package. This would be a major thrust area for us now,” said Rakesh Tandon, managing director.
To maintain its lead position in the domestic travel booking space, it wants to make the portal a one-stop shop for planning tours and introduce innovative facilities such as branded card and booking through SMS.
The company owned by the Indian Railways became an agent of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) more than a year ago. “Initially, when you enter a market, you tie up with the existing player or agency. Now, we are directly tying up with the airlines. We have already tied up with Air India and Jet Airways,” he said.
On an average, the IRCTC portal makes 360,000 to 370,000 bookings at present compared to 40,000 bookings in 2008. “We are targeting 750,000 bookings a day by 2015,” said Tandon.
08/04/12 Disha Kanwar & Jyoti Mukul/Business Standard
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