The Indian Railways clocked a marginal increase in revenue in 2016-17, 0.77 percent over 163,791 crore registered in 2015-16. However, while relatively small, the non-fare revenue registered strong growth to over 10,000 crore in 2016-17, growing 72 percent over the previous year (Source: Mint). The contribution went up from 3.6 percent of the total revenue in 2015-16 to 6.2 percent in 2016-17. The Railways is further looking to boost this revenue and has identified multiple sources including advertising on physical sites and web properties.

In order to do so, Indian Railways is reportedly planning to roll out 200K screens across the country to add advertising options for brands. With these screens, the Railways is looking to draw around 10,000 crore in advertising revenue over the next decade. The screens will operate as a centralised network termed as Rail Display Network and was proposed last year. A feasibility study was done by RailTel, the state run undertaking under the railways, by testing the system at popular stations.

The displays will primarily be used to display information useful to passengers while also delivering ads. It is also reported that the tech giant Google is keen to be a part of the project and bring its advertising expertise to help. Google has already been working with Indian Railways to provide free Wi-Fi across Indian railway stations and the two have already connected many railways stations even in Tier II and Tier III cities.

The Railways is also working on rolling out a new app to offer a full fledged inquiry system for passengers. In addition to providing information on arrivals, departures, delays, running status and availability, it will offer additional services to cater to other travel related needs like local transportation and accommodation. As these services will be provided by external partners, it will open up another revenue channel for Railways. Currently there are multiple apps and websites operated by IR and this will integrate them in one app.

The post Indian Railways plans to boost non-fare revenue with Rail Display Network appeared first on TravHQ.

India is often deemed unsafe for women travellers and there have been various incidents which further strengthened the notion. But recently a woman travelling alone on a train in Maharashtra received immediate help from railway officials when she directed a tweet to the Twitter handle of Railway minister Suresh Prabhu.

Around 7 PM on November 26, the passenger, Namrata Mahajan tweeted “”@RailMinIndia plz plz help in train no 18030. One male passenger harassing me at Shegaon. I am in train and terrified,” when she was passing through Shegaon railways station.

@RailMinIndia plz plz help in tarin no 18030 one male passanger harrassing me at shegaon I am in train terrified

— namrata mahajan (@namratamahajan1) November 26, 2015

She was soon asked for her PNR details so that help can be sent to her immediately. They also asked her to contact the 182 helpline that Indian Railways introduced earlier for emergency situations.

According to news reports, a senior officer Ved Prakash immediately noted the tweet and contacted Central Railway chief PRO, Narendra Patil. According to Mr. Patil, a tweet asking for her details was sent to her Twitter handle. Soon after she shared details of her position in train, she was attended by RPF jawans as the train reached Bhusaval railway station.

@namratamahajan1 Please your PNR immediately

— Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) November 26, 2015

The male passenger due to which Ms. Mahajan sent the tweet, was shifted to another coach by RPF. Relived after the assistance, Ms Mahajan sent another tweet thanking the minister “”@RailMinIndia sir help reached to me. Thanks a lot sir,”

Indian Railways is putting in lot of efforts to improve the experience for travellers and recently we have seen them adopt social media for offering better customer service. We saw that few weeks back when the video of a misbehaving ticket counter employee went viral. With Ministry of Railways working to drive up customer satisfaction, we look forward to a better train travel experience in future.

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A video of railway booking counter staff has been doing the rounds of social media for the past few days. The video shows a fierce argument that broke out, at the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Mumbai, between the travellers and ticket counter staff.

Despite the multiple channels that Indian Railways has opened up over the years, the booking counters at stations deal with heavy volume of passengers because of the large number of train travellers. The lady at the booking counter was causing delay in generating the tickets and was occupied counting the cash which annoyed the passengers. Once the argument started, the lady then refused to give them the tickets and called security to stop the person from filming the incident.

Here is the video posted by one of the travellers waiting at the counter:

Soon after the video was shared by The Logical Indian, their community picked it up resulting into a social media outrage. Large number of people shared it with the Twitter handle of Ministry of Railways, Minister for Railways and various local news websites.

A Heated Argument at the Railway Ticket Counter of ltt! https://t.co/WxKerdfWFg @mataonline @mumbai_mata @TrafflineMUM @smart_mumbaikar

— Hemant Satam (@hemantsatamMT) November 16, 2015

@RailMinIndia @sureshpprabhu. Good initiatives sir but this arrogant ticket booking staff. Plz watch video. https://t.co/dLrStQYgwu

— Vikas R. Shinde (@shindevikas18) November 16, 2015

Indian Railways was quick to take action against the booking window staff. Early next morning, Ministry of Railways tweeted that an action against her has been initiated followed by CPRO Central Railway sharing that the concerned staff has been suspended.

DRM has initiated action against her under DA&R (Discipline & Appeal Rule) https://t.co/HwEQU81aKV pic.twitter.com/0IOKR20Q9k

— Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) November 17, 2015

@RailMinIndia The concerned staff involved in heated argument at the ticket counter has been suspended @Central_Railway

— CPRO Central Railway (@Narendra_IRTS) November 17, 2015

While the Ministry of Railways was responsible enough to resolve it quickly, they need to look at the long term solutions for such problems. The processes need to be more seamless and staff better trained to avoid such situations.

The post Railway staff suspended after this video went viral appeared first on TravHQ.

While travelling in winters is fun, the season brings along many problems for the travellers. Flights get cancelled, trains delayed and roads are a nightmare because of low temperature and dense fog. Technology is an inevitable influencer of the travel industry today. Travellers use various apps extensively to simplify their journey.

Whether you are taking a flight, train or road, we have listed down the apps that will be of help during the coming winters:

#1: FlightStats

It is a free real-time flight status and airport tracking application developed by FlightStats – a leading travel brand that offers flight data services, trip solutions, and analytics to its customers at the global level. This app has a flight timeline section which helps the travellers get the latest flight updates on their cell phones. During winters as many flights run late or get cancelled, apps like FlightStats can be really useful.

This app has received a rating of 4.0/5 and users have appreciated it for giving accurate flight details and timely notifications for their travel plans. It has a simple user-interface with all relevant features like flight movements and airport weather.

You can download it here.

#2: NTES

National Train Enquiry System Android app is an official app of Indian Railways offering travel services for holiday vacation trips, official trips and daily commute. It has features such as live station, train schedule, diverted trains, real-time status queries and spot your train. In India, especially in winters, trains get delayed due to fog and rains. This app can help you track accurate status of your train so that you don’t end up spending hours at the station.

NTES has received a rating of 4.2 /5. While the interface isn’t something worth talking about, it does the job. Users have highlighted that it is possibly the best app without ads for spotting trains. It is one of the most trusted apps for train related bookings with nearly 5000,000 installs.

You can download it here here.

#3. RailYatri PNR Status & IRCTC Train info

This mobile application for train bookings can inform the travellers about their PNR statuses, train statuses, accurate wait-list confirmation predictions, GPS based enquiries, train time-tables, seat layouts etc. Developed by RailYatri, this app has possibly one of the largest and most updated train database on Indian railways.

With 4.4/5 rating, this app gives accurate data to the travellers. The app has been designed well and it offers taxi services in over 40+ cities giving it slight edge over NTES.

You can download it here.

#4. Accuweather

Road trips can be fun but unpredictable rain and fog can really hit your plans. Checking out weather information is deemed necessary for most of the travellers. Accuweather offers minute-by-minute weather forecast for cities, towns, latitudes and longitudes. Except predicting the weather in the days to come, Accuweather has current news and weather videos available in English and Spanish. Before you set off, check your route on maps and check the weather of major cities you will be crossing along the way so that you know what to expect.

Developed by Accuweather, it has received a rating of 4.3/5. It is considered to be one of the leading mobile apps for weather forecast across the world with around 100 million downloads.

You can download it here.

#5. HERE Maps

Developed by Nokia Apps LLC, HERE allows the download of offline maps so that the travellers can plan their journey ahead and save the maps of the destinations on the phone. This app provides online/offline maps of 100 countries around the world. It has public transit maps and information for around 1000 cities. It has an excellent and detailed voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation feature so that you spend more time looking out of the windscreen and less time looking at the map.

It has a received a rating of 4.4/5 and is mostly considered the best open-source map program in the app world. It is one of the prominent competitors of Google Map.

You can download it here.

What app would you like to add to this list?

The post Here are the apps you need to travel this winter! appeared first on TravHQ.