IRCTC revamps site and app with various new features
The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the Indian Railways' e-ticketing arm, has upgraded and revamped its website and app to offer a seamless ticket booking experience to passengers. They now feature various easy-to-access, user-friendly facilities, including viewing available trains and integrated booking for meals and accommodation along with tickets for an easier travel experience, among others. Here's a list of such features.
Faster website and AI-based predictive entry suggestions
1) A primary improvement will be a more stable website and app, with a greater capacity to handle user traffic during peak booking time, such as in the case of Tatkal bookings. 2) Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based predictive entry suggestions will be given to passengers when they are entering the station name so that they can save time while looking for the station.
Simpler meal booking and checking of refund status
3) Passengers will now be able to book tickets, meals, and accommodations at the same time. 4) The refund status of all journeys can be checked on the user account page. Earlier, this feature was not easily accessible. 5) Destinations can be saved under "regular" or "favorite" tabs so that one can easily book tickets to those destinations.
Other new features offered by IRCTC
6) The availability for all classes along with the respective fares of all trains will be displayed on the same page. Earlier, each train seat's availability and fares could be seen only after clicking on that train individually. 7) In the case of waitlisted tickets, their "confirmation probability" will be displayed. 8) The website also has in-built features for enhancing cybersecurity using appropriate CAPTCHAs.
'Despite challenges, Railways employees showed tremendous grit'
"Despite the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian Railways employees showed tremendous grit by ensuring the services are not disrupted," Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal recently said. Currently, the IRCTC website reportedly has more than 6 crore active users and is used to book over 8 lakh tickets daily. In fact, around 83% of the total reserved tickets are booked through this system.
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