Rlys eye budget hotels for facelift

The railways have identified the one value-addition that millions of passengers will find hard to resist: affordable hotel accommodation.

It has already begun a project of setting up budget hotels is as many as 40 railway sites across the country. These hotels would be constructed through public-private partnerships.

The railways are in the final stages of inviting tenders for five such properties on build-operate-transfer basis. The lease period for the hotels has been set at 30 years. Once these are constructed, the railways plan to offer total travel packages to passengers.

"The passenger will be in a position to buy his hotel accommodation along with his railway ticket," said executive director PK Goel. The IRCTC will enable travellers to buy these travel packages online.

The department is targeting middle and lower-middle class passengers, especially vacationing families, with these packages.

A substantial number of rooms in these hotels are expected to come for less than Rs 1,000 per night. The hotels would on an average have a capacity of around 100 rooms.

Apart from the larger cities, hotel sites have been identified at Shirdi, Katra, Haridwar, Amritsar, Agra, Darjeeling, Udaipur, Bikaner, Rameshwaram, Ooty, Madurai, Tirupati, and Madgaon.

Apart from religious tourism, budget hotels would also be set up at centres of adventure travel. The railways believe that private sector participants have much to gain by setting up these projects.

For one, the railways handle 16 million passengers daily, which means a huge captive customer market. This would help participating hospitality groups to improve their market share.

Some other tourism products that railways propose to roll out through public-private partnerships include luxury tourist trains, domestic tourist trains, steam-run hill station trains, village on wheels or Bharat darshan trains (the common man's palace on wheels) and full charter trains.