Travel players are excited after Railways Minister DV Sadananda Gowda announced the introduction of specially packaged trains for pilgrim circuits.

More than 23 per cent of bookings at travel portal Yatra.com come from pilgrim tourism. Sharat Dhall, President, Yatra.com, said, “We are certain that we will see more than a 100 per cent increase in bookings for the special trains.”

Travel search engine ixigo, however, will wait and see what the frequency, fare and timings of the proposed trains are, said its CEO and Co-founder Aloke Bajpai. Nearly 25 per cent of searches at ixigo.com are to destinations where the primary purpose of visit is religious tourism.

The Budget has also proposed to take up eco-tourism and education tourism in north eastern States. Gowda added, “There are 23 projects underway in the north east, out of which 11 are national projects.” Railways has earmarked ₹5,116 crore in 2014-15 for projects of north-east, which is 54 per cent higher than last year’s allocation.

“We witnessed a 20 per cent increase in bookings to north-east last year,” said Rajesh Magow, Co-founder & CEO-India, MakeMyTrip.