Rajni Hasija, CMD (LA) of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), on Thursday said that early trends of tourism revival are encouraging.

Speaking in an interview with CNBC-TV18, she said, “Need-based travel is happening but leisure-based travel now have started coming up. We have launched a few packages and the pattern of booking is encouraging. Our Leh-Ladakh package is completely sold, our budget tourism is also taking off now because we are heavily into religion-based tourism. Therefore, change in scenario and the pace at which vaccination is happening, the indications are good and encouraging too.”

On ticket booking, she said June bookings were better than pre-COVID levels and booked around 9.50-9.90 lakh tickets on some days in June whereas the pre-COVID daily booking number is around 8.5 lakh.

“Therefore, as the number of passengers is increasing and as the number of trains is increasing, the catering and other segments will also pick up. However, tourism is going to take some time because land packages have started taking up well, but rail-based tourism will take some time as it’s mass tourism,” said Hasija.

She further said that IRCTC has started its own payment gateway and nearly 10-12 percent of bookings happen through the same.

For the entire management interview, watch the video

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)