The Hindu Business Line : Railway tourism packages ‘rolling in business’

Kolkata, Sept. 12 The tour packages launched by the Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) have proved to be extremely popular, so much so that the current year’s first quarter business has been more than that of 2007-08.

Giving this information to newspersons here on Friday, Mr Vivek Srivastava, Group General Manager of IRCTC, Eastern Region, expressed hope that IRCTC’s various tour packages taken together would emerge as a major component of its total business in coming years.

Budget tourism

Mr Srivastava announced the launch of “Bharat Darshan”, a unique tour package based on the Railway Ministry’s idea of “Village on Wheels”, i.e. tailor-made for budget tourists.

The nine-day tour will cost Rs 4,500 for a person, inclusive of all meals, travel, transport and sightseeing. The itinerary will be Kharagpur-Howrah-Durgapur-Asansol-Gaya-Rajgir-Agra-Mathura-Delhi-Hardwar-Varanasi-Howrah.

Bharat Darshan

“In fact, we’re charging Rs 500 per person per day, which is very reasonable,” Mr Srivastava said. “More importantly, there will be no outsourcing of services, as everything is being done departmentally.”

Bharat Darshan will start on October 4. The train will have seven sleeper coaches, sufficient to accommodate 350 passengers.

IRCTC’s offices in other regions too were working on similar tour programmes, he said.

“IRCTC has been given two rakes for the entire country, one for the east and we hope to launch Bharat Darshan programmes for South India and Rajasthan also,” he said. “We can run at least two programmes every month.”

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Railway tourism packages ‘rolling in business’