In a bid to attract more airline bookings through its portal, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the Railways’ subsidiary which is known more for online train ticket bookings, will offer insurance of up to ₹50 lakh for free for air passengers who book their tickets through its portal. IRCTC has tied up with Bharti-Axa for the offer.
MakeMyTrip, Yatra and other travel portals charge about ₹200-250 for flight insurance.
“We are offering insurance of up to ₹50 lakh for free,” said Mahendra Pratap Mall, Chairman Managing Director, IRCTC, on Wednesday.
“The move is to attract airline booking through our portal,” Rajni Hasija, Director-Tourism and Marketing, IRCTC, said.
Service charge
Incidentally, IRCTC’s service charge of ₹59 is the cheapest compared with travel websites.
IRCTC has tied up with Galileo, a computer reservation system, for powering the flight search engine.
At present, over 30 lakh users login through its mobile app and three lakh ticket bookings happen daily through the app.
Currently, IRCTC books about 7-7.5 lakh tickets a day. In November, it had booked as high as 8.7 lakh tickets a day.
Another move that could boost IRCTC’s flight booking is its payment gateway aggregator —IRCTC Pay or iPay — which is currently operational on IRCTC airline or flight portal. The move is expected to speed up the payment process.