If 2020 was a ‘no travel year’ due to the coronavirus pandemic, the hopes of life getting back on track have rekindled in 2021, with the imminent vaccine rollout in the next few days. So, promising a better travel experience for the railway passengers, IRCTC has revamped its website and app, making it more user-friendly. And now is the time to give wings to your travel plan and make up for the year just gone by.
Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal launched the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s upgraded e-ticketing website and mobile app for online booking of railway tickets. He termed it as the ‘New Year gift for passengers’. “Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is launching a website which will bring transparency, at the end of this year. This is a New Year gift for passengers. IRCTC should focus on customer needs and work towards further improving the website,” Goyal had said.
The new website and app will assist users in booking meals, retiring rooms and hotels along with booking of the tickets. It will also predict entry suggestions using artificial intelligence. It will be easier for users to check their refund status with the upgraded website.
The railway customer has been focus of the design of this new world class website for booking of rail tickets.
According to IRCTC, the new website will take the train ticket booking experience of passengers to next level.
IRCTC revamped website: Salient Features
-Complete User personalization linked to the user login, such as the booking of meals, retiring rooms and hotels has been integrated.
-Predictive entry suggestions using Artificial Intelligence to be given to the passenger when he is entering the station or passenger. This will greatly reduce the hassle in searching stations and also save time in ticket booking.
-Simpler checking of the refund status at the user accounts page. Earlier this feature was not easily accessible.
-‘Regular’ or ‘Favorite’ journeys can be booked easily by automatically entering relevant details.
-Train search and selection simplified by putting the information on one page to reduce the time used by passengers and enhancing the booking experience.
-All information on one page, availability for all class are displayed along with respective fares for all trains. Simply scroll the page and choose to ‘Book’ the desired train and class. Earlier each train seat availability and fares could be seen only after clicking on that train individually.
-A ‘Cache system’ has been introduced in the backend to provide availability status. This will avoid delays in loading availabilities.
-In case of waitlisted tickets, its ‘confirmation probability’ is displayed. Earlier this had to be checked for each waitlist status separately.
-Availability for other dates can be toggled on the page itself.
-Prompts during the booking process for making it easy for even less computer familiar users. This will save his time in wandering on the website for searching the website.
-The journey details will be shown also at the payment page. It will prompt the user to check and rectify if there are any typographical errors.
-The website has in-built features for enhancing cyber security by using appropriate captchas.
Goyal had on 25 December said that IRCTC e-ticketing website should have all the features for ease of booking by the passengers. At present, this e-ticketing website of IRCTC has more than 6 crore active users, using it to book more than 8 lakhs tickets daily. Around 83 per cent of the total reserved railway tickets are booked through IRCTC e-ticketing website.
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