As luxury bus travel remains untouched by the overall slowdown in the travel industry, a bevy of travel companies are cashing in on this opportunity by getting into luxury coach bookings or expanding their already existing portfolios.
Industry experts say that in the past six months, a host of online bus portals, including TicketGoose, TicketKaran, Customerneedz and TravelYaari have sprung up, while biggies like Makemytrip, Yatra and Ezeego1 have got into the business. Sources say travel portal Cleartrip is also evaluating getting into online bus bookings.
While a large part of private intercity bus travel in the country is unorganised and does not throw up consolidated data, a number of online and offline bus booking operators, reservation system enablers and consolidators, including Redbus, Mantis and travel portals like Makemytrip, estimate that travel in luxury coaches has increased by around 25 per cent over the past year.
There are around 2,000 organised private bus operators in the country, running a total of around 20,000 luxury buses. At around Rs 500 per seat and an average occupancy of 75 per cent, the total industry turnover comes to about Rs 12,000 crore.
Western India-based company Mantis, which runs an internet reservation platform for bus bookings, as well as an online bus portal called Travelyaari, has aggressive expansion plans.
“Currently we have a live reservation platform wherein we sell inventory (bus seats) for some operators online. On the other side, our platform is also used by travel portals like Makemytrip, Ezeego and our bus portal, Travelyaari. By graduating to a consolidator, which means having access to multiple such platforms, we will add another 20 operators to our system, which has 40 operators already,” said Arvind Lama of Mantis.
Mantis has a total inventory of 25,000 seats per day and this is estimated to increase by more than 50 per cent.
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Mantis is also enabling interselling of tickets between different bus operators, in line with code sharing that happens in case of airlines. In this case, if a passenger has access to a bus operator that does not have connectivity in the some route, the passenger can buy a ticket and avail the services of another bus operator through the platform.
Redbus, which is one of the largest bus bookings sites in the country, estimates its revenues to have increased six times from Rs 5 crore last year to Rs 30 crore in 2008-09.
Speaking about the scope for industry growth, Phanindra Sama, CEO of Redbus says, “In India we have two luxury coaches for every 1,000 people in the country, while China has 10. This gives an idea of the scope for growth in the country. Overall, the private bus operators are much stronger in the West and South region, since connectivity is easier. The North has inter-state taxation issues, which is why most of the interstate operations are run by the government,” said Sama.
The entry of a lot of travel portals in the country would only mean that the passenger gets added amenities.
Makemytrip, which was the first to get into the bus booking business, has seen a 100 per cent growth in the past few months. It is planning to offer bundled packages, which would include luxury coach travel and hotel bookings. The portal, which has an inventory of 8,000 buses offered by 500 bus operators across 4,000 routes in 14 states, is also in talks with state governments like Karnataka to enable bookings of their bus services on their portal.
The positive impact is seen in bus sales as well. Luxury bus major Volvo said that its sales have seen a brisk increase in recent months.
“We have landed an order for 150 luxury buses priced between Rs 72 and 87 lakh from the state governments of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, apart from private developers,” said a spokesperson for Volvo.