New Delhi: IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation), Indian Railways most popular platform to book train tickets in a major makeover has re-launched its website. However, to ensure there is no inconvenience to the public, IRCTC is offering train bookings on both old and new website. Mint takes you to an experiential walk through the IRCTC’s new website.
Tired of logging in or forgetting your username and password. The new website skips the step. You can enquire or search for trains and check for availability of seats without logging in while the older version only allowed access to the registered users.
The new website is handy with date and time and is clear in its appearance and not cluttered with information. The clean layout gives enough space to the advertisers to portray their advertisements and IRCTC to make some bucks.
It gives an estimate of whether a waitlisted ticket has the likelihood of being confirmed or not. The unique feature has been introduced by filling into an algorithm the booking data from the past 13 years. The algorithm prepared by CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems), gives “robust” estimates. Nearly 13 lakh tickets are booked on the IRCTC website every day against the 10.5 lakh available berths.
The new website also caters more seamlessly to devices of various sizes by automatically altering the layout, making the mobile and tablet experience far more user-friendly.
The new avatar of IRCTC offers the ‘Vikalp’ scheme in the very first window where passengers can opt for alternate trains too. The ‘Vikalp’ feature allows the facility of choosing an alternate journey plan in case the ticket is waitlisted.
The website redesign is the latest in a slew of “upgrades” the IRCTC has undergone in recent months, including a tie-up with Ola for last-mile connectivity, a partnership with RazorPay to support UPI payments on the online portal, and tie-ups with several start-ups like Paytm, Mobikwik, and Hello Curry for a variety of services.
Besides, train booking the new website offers various other services being offered by the railways, like exotic hill railways, charter railways, tourist trains, holiday packages and e-catering services. Passengers can now book these on the new website with just one click. These include rail tour packages with train tickets, sight-seeing and meals, divine tours.