Abhibus to provide bus ticket bookings to IRCTC Customers
AbhiBus.com, India’s fastest growing online marketplace for bus ticketing adds a new feather to its success by partnering with India’s largest ticket booking platform, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). While IRCTC enables over 9 Lakh train tickets every day, at the same time, this collaboration will open bus ticket booking window to IRCTC customers wherein Abhibus will enable the bus ticketing option on IRCTC’s platform PAN India.
Abhibus is one of the oldest players in bus ticketing and has catered to over 45 Million customers till date since it started its Online Passenger reservation system before launching the e-ticketing platform- Abhibus.com and its mobile apps. With this partnership, IRCTC will get the bus inventory across 100,000 Bus routes and IRCTC customers will get options to book tickets for Sleeper/Non-sleeper, Ac/Non-AC buses as per their requirement. With this collaboration, IRCTC plans to ease travel booking for its customers wherein if they find train tickets in waiting list, they can quickly refer to bus availability without hopping from one platform to another, giving the travellers a hassle-free booking experience.
Commenting on the tie-up Mr. Shashanka Koona, Chief Commercial Officer – AbhiBus said, “Enhancing customer experience and ensuring that customers are provided with convenient, easy and hassle-free modes of access to booking their travel requirements, especially bus travel, have been the prime objectives for Abhibus. The organisation over the last 13 years has worked extensively across each state in India to tie up with almost all private and government RTC bus operators. The partnership with IRCTC will allow AbhiBus to grow exponentially, while IRCTC customers will have hassle free & immediate access to India’s largest online bus inventory with innovative payment and promotional options to take care of their first mile, last mile and alternate connectivity choices”.
“IRCTC has always striven to deliver the most comprehensive travel solutions to the Indian citizenry. And what better way to achieve maximum connectivity than to provide bus booking options to even the remotest location in the country. IRCTC tie-up with AbhiBus will help IRCTC to reach out to the millions of travellers with the most exhaustive bus inventory available online for bridging not just the first & last mile connectivity gaps, but also provide an alternative travel option in case of train unavailability. The various State RTCs and Private Bus operator fleet will let the users choose from over 100,000 routes. IRCTC and Abhibus hope for a long & fruitful partnership.” IRCTC added in their statement.
Since the lockdown was eased in September 2020, AbhiBus has witnessed a staggering increase of nearly 200% in demand over the last 4-5 months. This has coincided with AbhiBus being able to bridge the supply gap by onboarding over 150 new private operators and 3 new Government RTC operators.
Their overall bookings have recovered to over 100% of the pre-Covid peak numbers. This steep rise in numbers can be attributed to the fact that travel sentiments have changed significantly as the festive season approached with a 32% month on month increase in October & 36% in November from a booking’s perspective. Not surprisingly, Goa has been the number one destination for both short term and long-term visit with 45% Goa visitors having booked their return on AbhiBus platform within 4 days of stay and the rest booking their return after 15-20 days of stay.
Currently with its tie-ups with various state transport corporations including APSRTC, TSRTC, KeralaRTC, PRTC (Puducherry), OSRTC, KTC (Goa), MSRTC, GSRTC, UPSRTC, BSRTC, HRTC (Himachal), RSRTC, Haryana Roadways, WBTC to name a few, AbhiBus has consistently clocked over 30,000 bookings per day, over the last three months.
