Latest News | Abhibus Logs 100% Rise in Online Bus Bookings Post Easing of Lockdowns

Mumbai, Nov 13 (PTI) Online ticketing aggregator Abhibus on Friday said it has seen 100 per cent surge in bus bookings to five million, driven by driven by easing of travel restrictions post lockdown relaxations by various states and also helped by festive travel by people.

Additionally, the company provides online reservation solutions to over 300 private and five RTC (Road Transport Corporation) operators that witnessed over two crore tickets sold during this period where online reservations touched the highest ever percentage, AbhiBus said in a release.

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The company also said that it expects its November bookings this year to exceed the total number of bookings it received in the same month last year.

Abhibus witnessed 100 per cent spike in its engagement since lockdown with five million online bus bookings since lockdown, which is a result with the gradual ease in the lockdown and with festivities, the company said, adding that it recorded an average daily booking rate of 50,000 within three days of the Dussehra weekend.

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"We were expecting our November bookings count to exceed the booking we made in last November. Interestingly, during COVID-19 lockdown, the intra-state travel was 80 per cent and inter-state 20 per cent which got reversed to 70 per cent bookings for inter-state travel and 30 per cent for intra-state travel post unlock 5.0," said Rohit Sharma, Chief Operating Officer of Abhibus.

The sentiments played a critical role in this recent spike as everyone's life was paused during the lockdown and people were craving to move out whether it is for leisure travel or working millennials moving back to the metros, he added.

According to the release, the Hyderabad-Vijayawada route witnessed the maximum bookings at 84,000 even after state-owned transports, including Andhra Pradesh and Telanagna state road transport corporations, started operations in late October.

The Delhi-Jammu route surprisingly saw a remarkable spike in traffic with around 31,000 online bookings that is primarily triggered by travellers visiting Vaishno Devi from across the country during Navratri and thereafter, it said.

The Delhi-Jammu route has also overtaken the previously most engaged route in the north for Abhibus -- the Delhi-Lucknow route -- by two times which has witnessed a traffic of around 15,000 this festive season as working professionals have started moving back towards NCR from their native places, the company said.

The other region which witnessed considerable engagement for the company is Pune-Nagpur with 14,500 seats bookings in the last one month as Maharashtra was under lockdown for the longest period and bus movements have started in the second half of October, said the release.

The Jaipur-Delhi route too has seen a decent traffic with 13,000 seat bookings as people and businessmen started moving back to NCR, it said adding that Tamil Nadu being the last state to relax inbound traffic has also seen 10 times increase with 31,800 bookings in the last ten days.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)