Garima Singh

Fear of virus has crippled the travel industry, train travel in particular, which is witnessing a dip with the Covid-19 outbreak.

There is a fall in the number of ticket bookings and cancellations too are on the rise, according to an industry insider.

“Trains going towards Delhi have been impacted more with 25 per cent rise in the number of ticket cancellations as compared to last month. Main routes affected are Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai,” said Dinesh Kotha, Co-founder, Confirmtkt, an online train ticket discovery and booking engine.

The new bookings have also gone down by more than 20 per cent from February this year. Recently, the portal also launched free cancellation policy, which allows users to get a free cancellation on their train bookings, added Kotha.

Data available on Rail Drishti — the digital portal of Indian Railways that has information about tickets, passengers, earnings — mentioned that in the past one week ended March 16, the total number of tickets booked were 48, 16, 810 — a fall of 28.80 per cent as compared to the same period last year.

On the other hand, the number of passengers who took trains in last seven days has also seen a dip of 38.69 per cent as compared to the same period last year.

Recently, the Central Railways and Western Railways have also announced withdrawing of curtains and blankets from AC coaches ‘as they are not washed every trip’ to take preventive action against coronavirus. “Passengers may please bring their own blankets if need be,” read the statement.

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