Sheela Segaram, an NRI from Malaysia, along with three other people - one from Malaysia and two from Australia, had booked a Golden Chariot tour which was supposed to depart on March 12. The group had booked their flights too. However, one week before the scheduled departure date, they received communication from IRCTC that the trip had been cancelled.
“This is not the first time it has happened. My colleagues were supposed to depart on February 19 on the train, but that was also cancelled. This does not look good on Indian tourism,” said Ms. Segaram. For one night on the Golden Chariot, passengers have to pay around $750-$1,000.
Post its grand relaunch in November 2022, the luxury train Golden Chariot has taken only one trip. Not just that, passengers have reported that their bookings are being cancelled by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) citing lack of bookings as the reason. The inaugural tour had run on a 46% occupancy.
Sources in IRCTC said that haulage charges were one of the major reasons why the luxury train cannot run without a certain level of occupancy. “This is the challenge of running a luxury train. With hotels, even with 10-20% occupancy, business can still go on as their fixed costs are spent only once. But we have to pay both fixed and variable haulage charges, which are huge amounts. We can let go of the fixed charges, but we have to recover variable haulage charges which is why we need more bookings,” they said.
The source further said that while haulage charges have been reduced by 33% for other trains under the Bharat Gaurav Trains Policy by the Union government, the same has not been granted for luxury trains resulting in them paying crores of haulage charges. The officials also said that to avoid confusion, travellers and travel agents are always informed that the tour is subject to cancellation in case of insufficient occupancy.
In December, IRCTC announced special discounts and offers to attract more tourists during the holiday season and yet, there were not enough bookings to run a trip. The officials are hopeful of getting more bookings post October, in the holiday season of 2023-24. “International tourism still has to pick up post the pandemic. The bookings will definitely increase in the next season,” they said.
