Cost of providing online booking service by travel agencies to increase 10 times.
Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has indicated that online travel agents will have to pay Rs. 12, excluding taxes, for every ticket booked online by them as an annual maintenance charge (AMC). This new fee structure as opposed to the flat rate paid earlier has irked the travel portal firms. The cost of providing online train ticket booking, to customers will increase 10 times as a result of this.
“IRCTC charges used to be a flat Rs 25 lakh for almost every integration that we had to do, be it payment gateway, as agents, or as a wallet option on their platform. Now with the pricing being moved to a per-ticket basis, it might be easier for smaller startups for whom the down payment used to be a challenge, but for others it is a cost that will be eventually passed on to consumers,” the chief executive officer of one of the largest online travel agents with IRCTC told The Economic Times.
According to the report, the online travel portal executives have expressed concern that this AMC would increase their costs Rs. 40 - 50 crore approximately. Furthermore, should there be any discrepancies in payment, the same shall be collected from the travel agencies at the time of renewal of service.
“While rail bookings is not a revenue driver for us, with the proposed changes, we will revisit the financial construct and see if it has any adverse impact on the cost of providing this service to our consumers and take a call accordingly,” Aditya Agarwal, head of corporate strategy at Cleartrip, told the paper.