Indian Railways arm to set up 3-star hotels

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC), a catering and tourism arm of Indian Railways, has announced a series of new services and projects to boost its services and tourism as well.

The corporation has announced five three-star budget hotels, under the brand name 'Rail Ratna', in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Veraval and Dwarka.

Managing director of IRCTC P K Goel, who was here to announce the launch of its regional office, said, "We are in the process of inviting tenders from private players to run these hotels. With more than 100 rooms, these three-star hotels are being set up to cater to the needs of travellers who always have a problem in finding places to stay."

Work on these hotels will begin by January 2007 and is likely to be completed within two years.

The corporation is also introducing other services like car rental services and call centres with a national number '139', food plazas, etc.

"A complete 'one-shop' logistics is needed to cater to the needs of the travellers like proper eating joints, place to stay and modes of transportation. Hence, these services are being introduced to provide satisfaction to the customer," said Goel.

However, with the state celebrating the 'Tourism Year', IRCTC denied any plans to revive the luxury train service 'Royal Orient' after the gauge transformation.

Meanwhile, the corporation has finally decided to end the confusion of multiple contracts by allotting all three services of food, linen and cleanliness of certain segment of trains to a single contractor.

Talks are also on with oil PSUs like HPCL, BPCL and IOCL, and private players like Reliance, to introduce e-tickets counters at petrol pumps.

Customers, who don't have credit cards, can buy e-tickets from these pumps by paying cash.

Announcing other projects in the pipeline, Goel said, "A special train service on religious routes at a nominal rate of Rs 500 per day will be introduced by January 2007 in several states including Gujarat. We are also planning to allow individuals to charter coaches or a whole train, which will be introduced soon."

"On the food catering side, we are introducing cyclic menu on Rajdhanis and Shatabdis and will be installing around-the-clock monitoring system of the catering services," said Goel.