Friday, March 21, 2014

New record: 5.80 lakh e-tickets booked on IRCTC website on March 19

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation's (IRCTC) e-ticketing website was able to book 5.80 lakh e-tickets on March 19. It is the highest ever single day booking.

The earlier highest was on September 2, 2013 when it booked 5.72 lakh e-tickets.

IRCTC's spokesperson said, presently, the site books more than 4.63 lakh tickets with an average of 9.47 lakh passengers daily as against 3.85 lakh tickets with 6.86 lakh passengers booked daily during 2013."

It means there is a 20% increase in the number of tickets and a 38% increase in the number of passengers.

He further said, "All these translate into a present daily transaction of more than Rs 53 crores as against Rs 37 crores in 2013, all of which make www.irctc.co.in one of the biggest e-commerce sites in the world."

To reduce the traffic and unnecessary hits during the peak hours, IRCTC has recently launched "IRCTC Lite" during Tatkal period i.e. 10 am to 1200 pm. Every day, this service is now effective from 0930 am. In this effort, IRCTC removed all the links, images, ads, services, features which are not helping or not required at the time of premium Tatkal ticket booking.

He said. "This paid dividend in the form of increased number of booking during the Tatkal period. In the first hour of Tatkal booking (10 am-11 am), the earlier average booking before the introduction of the "IRCTC Lite" was around 48,000 tickets, which has now jumped to more than 58,000."