Post on 21-Mar-2017
Presented By- ASHU
IRCTC Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation, abbreviated
to IRCTC.
Type : Subsidiary of Indian Railways Industry : Railways Headquarter : New Delhi, NCT, India Corporate Office : B 148, 11th Floor, Statesman House, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi- 110001 Area Served : India Service : Catering, Tourism and Online Ticketing Parent : Indian Railways
IRCTC The basic purpose of hiving off entire catering and tourism
activity of the railways to the new Corporation so as to professionalize and upgrade these services with public-private participation.
Rail based Tourism in India will be the specific vehicle for achieving high growth in coordination with state agencies, tour operators, travel agents and the hospitality industry.
A dynamic marketing strategy in association with public and private agencies, tour operators, transporters, hoteliers and local tour promoters is on the anvil. Indian Railways span global volumes in hospitality and catering sectors with services provided to 13 million passengers everyday.
Tourism
IRCTC arranges for full train charters,coaches as well as reserved berth programmes through regular trains for tourism purposes. During this short period we have been able to provide such facilities to over 50,000 persons.
Also organizes budget and deluxe package tours for domestic and foreign tourists.
That involve special luxury trains such as Palace on Wheels, Royal Orient Express, Golden Chariot, Deccan Odyssey, Royal Rajasthan on Wheels, Buddhist Circuit Train and it is a partner in the Maharajas' Express operation.
Apart from conventional tourism, it also offers adventure tourism packages that include water sports, adventure and wildlife treks, etc. A provision for customizing tours as per specific requirements is also an added attraction.
Internet Rail Reservation It pioneered internet-based rail ticket booking through its website,
as well as from the mobile phones via GPRS or SMS. Seeking to make it easier to book e-tickets, It launched a scheme
called Rolling Deposit Scheme (RDS). RDS is a hassle-free e-ticket booking scheme allowing
passengers to reserve seats against advance MONEY kept with the corporation.
It has also added flights and HOTELS BOOKING facilities to their line of online reservation services.
IRCTC web enabled reservation site is www.irctc.co.in One may log on to railtourismindia.com and book Rail Tour
Package, Holiday Package, Hotels, Cabs, Tourist Trains online.
Non Railway Segment IRCTC is diversifying into Non Railway Segment which includes
Budget Hotels, Food Kiosk, Food Parks, Catering Service, Facility Management Service, Guest House and Hostel management etc.
IRCTC is banking on newly started catering and facility management division through which it provides a one window solution for catering, front office, housekeeping, security, laundry, ITES and horticulture services to government organizations, corporate and educational institutions.
This segment also includes taking up of hospitality project on turnkey basis. Setting up of IRCTC brand Food Kiosks at DMRC stations is also planned. Non Railway Segment has a potential to contribute around 30% to its total revenue in coming years
Catering IRCTC is in charge of catering services on trains and railway stations
across India. Depending on the distance covered by the train and average
passenger load factor, the railways either equips trains with their own pantry cars or provides meals at select stations en route.
Food Plazas IRCTC has firmed up plans to set up over 50 multi-cuisine food plazas at
major railway stations throughout the country during the current year. The Food plazas will have contemporary decor , air conditioned ambience
and round the clock operation to suit passenger convenience with market driven competitive pricing.
Call Center IRCTC has recently inaugurated a Call Center. A customer can dial 139
from anywhere in the country and get all information from Indian Railways.
Product line
IRCTC offers products especially train tickets as its main core product. Expanding its horizons, IRCTC ventured into marketing new products services such as offering flight tickets, hotel reservations, tourist packages, car rentals and special tourist train services. It has also increased it basket of offering by including e-shopping- books, mobile phones, clothing, and hand bags and so on. It is successfully heading towards one stop for all tourism and other popularly purchased e-shopping products under one portal.
IRCTC appoints Amazon as official shopping partner for 2 years Amazon.in's shopping gateway will be promoted
across its websites.
The tie up would give IRCTC's consumer base, over 21 million, access to shop at Amazon directly. IRCTC and Amazon.in's shopping gateway will be promoted across its websites and will be present on all platforms--computers or mobile phone.
IRCTC charges for booking an e-ticket is less than what traveling to the railway over the counter costs.
The charges are minimal, beginning from Rs.10 for a ticket that too with the convenience of tickets being delivered at the doorstep to people in not just in Tier-I but also residing in the Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
IRCTC hits the chord with its economical accessibility reaching all the sections of the society another USP of IRCTC.
The dynamic fare pattern is similar to the one used by airlines with it going up with rising demand. The fare applicable to each day/transaction is indicated at the time of booking on the IRCTC’s e-ticketing website.
The scheme has been kept simple - only end to end tickets, no discounts of any kind, no waiting list tickets, and the fare starts from the Tatkal fares of other Rajdhanis, and keep going up as the seats get filled.
This is a fairer system public, generates higher revenues for Railways, and is basically a win-win situation for all stake holders.
Distribution strategy It charges a commission on every ticket booked through its portal.
Following models used by IRCTC in E-Commerce.
• G TO C (Government to Consumers(end users)) • G TO B (Government to Business(travel agents)) • B TO C (Business to Consumers) through IRCTC website portal.
IRCTC’s distribution strategy of awarding the delivery contract to only one courier company has been one of its USPs (Unique Selling Proposition).
This policy has given more control to IRCTC over delivery, with just a single channel of communication to take care of. At present, e- tickets are delivered in 102 cities across the country.
Indian Railways Authorised Agents- Internet cafe Scheme(ICS) 1 RTSA (Rail Travel Services Agents)
2 Town Booking Agency (TBA)
3 City Booking Agency
OTA Scheme (B2C Scheme)
1 Clear Trip Travel Services P. Ltd.
2 Jigrahak Mobility Solutions Pvt Ltd. (Ngpay)
3 Make My Trip India Pvt. Ltd.
4 Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd.
GSAs in Abroad -Internet cafe Scheme(ICS)1 Aditi Travels (GSA, Nepal) 2 Caesar Travels (GSA, Kuwait) 3 Golden Holiday & Travel Company (GSA, Kenya)4 Jaya Ganga Tours & Travels Pvt. Ltd (Nepal)5 Mahesh Travel & Tour (Nepal)6 Mustafa Air Travel Pte Ltd. (Singapore)7 Orient Paradise (GSA Nepal)8 Rex Travels (GSA Nepal)9 Travel Planner (GSA, Nepal)
Four steps taken by Modi government to make it easier to book train tickets Restricting booking of train e-tickets on a single login: The
Ministry of Railways has decided to restrict the number of tickets that an individual can book via the e-ticketing platform, in a single login session.
RuPay Pre-paid Card: Prabhu has also launched the IRCTC and Union Bank of India RuPay Pre-paid Card, which is loaded with an amount as desired by the customer and can be redeemable for rail tickets, to buy goods and services on IRCTC website.
Book 4 months in advance: Now travellers can book train tickets four months in advance as the Railways has decided to extend the advance reservation period from 60 days to 120 days, with effect from April 1.
Cash on delivery of train tickets: You can now book a rail ticket online and get it delivered at home where the payment can be made.
E-Commerce (Electronic Commerce) has revolutionized the very concept of marketing with regards to procedures and the mechanics.
IRCTC uses some social media channels, public relations to promote their e-ticketing portal.
IRCTCs facebook page features several events or workshops being conducted, along with new trains and packages being launched in India.
On Twitter, IRCTC primarily uses it to interact one-on-one with people who have some issues, questions or grievances.
IRCTC also relies on word-of-mouth publicity for promoting its website portal.
Tie-ups with Company
Being the most popular site for e ticketing in India, a lot of companies have tied up with IRCTC, for advertising their products providing considerable revenue as well, which is the primary source of revenue for the site.
Also, various travel portals like yatra.com, makemytrip.com have tied up with IRCTC in order to offer ticket booking services through their own sites.
IRCTC collects a fee from those agencies as well.
CRM Of IRCTC Providing alerts and updates. Convenient – You can book or cancel your tickets sitting in the
comfort of your home or office. Saves Time and Effort - You can save the time needed to travel
to the railway reservation office and waiting in the queue for your turn.
Give SMS of your ticket. Give ticket in your mail. Refunding money very fast if your transaction get failed. Maintaining privacy in every transaction. Started Comesum restaurant, shopping for customer.
IRCTC brings the most convenient way of booking Indian Rail Tourism Products & to become the approved domestic sales agent for selling all tourism products through www.irctctourism.com and www.services.irctc.co.in are:
Rail tour Packages Holiday Packages Hotel bookings Bharat Darshan Cabs Fairy Queen Buddhist Train
The first website to accept cash on delivery for railway tickets. Rivals Makemytrip, Yatra and Cleartrip allow customers to book railway tickets online but do not accept cash on delivery.
The domain name BookMyTrain.com has been registered by Noida-based Anduril Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
According to the company’s website, Anduril was incubated at Amity Innovation Incubator, an initiative by Amity Business School, and founded by Pooja Chauhan and Anurag Bajpai.
One of the reason for reliability/ trustworthy of brand is that IRCTC is a government website. It is funded and maintained by Indian Railways.
OTA Business Models
Merchant Net rate, excludes commission
Retail Includes commission, backed out afterwards
Opaque Bidding method, brand not disclosed until after sale
Major OTAs and Default Business Models
Bookings.com retail
Expedia merchant
Hotels.com merchant
Hotwire opaque
Orbitz merchant
Priceline Opaque
Travelocity merchant
Travelweb merchant
Other OTAs merchant, retail, & opaque
Benefits For Railways Single screen, rich internet application. Reservation process on the home page of IRCTC. Easy access has increased revenue. Less crowd at counter – easy to manage. Cost Saving – for railways it is saving on their infrastructure i.e.
Building, Air-Conditioning, Electricity, Furniture, Staff etc. The spirit behind the project was to avoid the customer going to Passenger Reservation System (PRS) and instead bring (PRS) to customer.
Efficient managing of voluminous information and data effectively.
Minimizes possibilities of manipulation and malpractice. Enables centralized control for monitoring and auditing. Ensure accounting of the ticket sold across all railway stations.
Vision “To be the leading provider of high quality travel, tourism
and hospitality related services, for a range of customer segments, with consistently high level of customer satisfaction.”
Mission “IRCTC will establish itself as a leader in the area(s) of
hospitality services , Travel and Tourism, packaged drinking water, and Internet Ticketing by providing value added products and services for passengers, tourists and other customers, targeting IR and Non-IR related services alike, building a resilient business portfolio that is scalable and based on core competence.”
Conclusion IRCTC is the without a shred of doubt, proved to be a
pride and joy of the Indian Railways. By focusing on overcoming technical glitches, enhancing more user friendly interface, with comprehensive plans to tie up with more banks and to offer new services in new areas, constantly innovating in tune with new age websites and providing a positive and enriching customer experience. With the focus on digital inclusion with everyone having access to technology, a new paradigm will be set altogether in which IRCTC will have to strengthen its forte of rail ticketing and operate successfully.