As the ATF fuel (ATF - Aviation Turbine Fuel commonly called Jet fuel) skyrockets (pun intended) the prices for all the fares have increased tremendously. There has been 20% drop in the weekly flight schedule since March 2008 (source - economictimes.indiatimes.com)
To add to this, the newer airports like Hyderabad and Bangalore are levying hefty airport duty (yet to come but in the pipeline or so I've heard). And above all, the travel to the airport which is now outside the city and takes about an hour to get to, has put off passengers from flying anywhere. So what are our alternatives?
The railways is monopolized by the Indian Government and booking is primarily done directly by waiting at the booking places and if online from irctc.co.in. Many people I know (including me) are giving the good ol' bus another look. Here are the top 7 sites for booking your road trip.
Ticketvala.com - Ticketvala claims to be India's largest Online Bus Ticket platform. They have a special feature called the mTicket which allows a passenger to receive a confirmation of your booking on your mobile and this confirmation acts as your boarding pass. They have quite a few payment channels, and last minute booking. You can contact their call centre for tickets and even have your tickets delivered at your doorstep. Home delivery is available in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune, for those outside this region, you'll have to wait a while till ticketvala comes to your home.
Apart from this they provide other services like car hire, bus hire and budget hotels listing. An ideal list for the budget traveler.
Ticketkaran.in - This Chennai based website says its the first to provide frequent traveler program for Bus travelers (step aside jet gold members). This site too offers mobile phone confirmation of your ticket and the ease of booking your ticket by phone by calling their booking room. The site offers delivery for nominal chargers to most locations in Chennai.
This site is brand new (as are most sites on this list). Only once testimonials and other features are added will we understand how useful this site really is.
Redbus.in - This was the first site I'd heard of that allows online bus booking. Its been there for 2 years now. This site has by far the largest number of bus travel operators and spans to more than 80 cities in India. It offers all the services provided by the other sites, like home delivery (at a nominal fee in major cities), mobile booking etc. There are 3 things I adore about this site:
- First the localization with the Indic language translations (5 of them).
- Second the Testimonials page, people have enjoyed the service and great service never goes unnoticed. There have been tonnes of suggestions appreciations and love letters that this site has recieved. I especially like - I think redBus is the right answer for all our travel related problems. The options available at your website are very comprehensive. - Nageshwara Rao K - Well said Nageshwara.
- Third and not the least, there is a little link under the booking section that says "Boss is watching? Look busy." It takes you to some random excel page with numbers and charts. I couldn't believe it. Good job redbus!
TakeOffTrip.com - One of the quickest sites I've seen in the group. Very quick results and crisp layout just draws you in to the site. Once you're in you're hooked. The site has amazing user engagement with trivia during on the loading screen if the loading is slow etc. There aren't too many special features for bus passengers like mobile booking and home delivery of tickets. The site is a complete travel site and bus is just another service they provide. They also have a train link but I guess its still under construction. I can't wait to find out what this feature does.
CheckOutTrip.com - Again a Hyderabad based site. Its more of a Online travel agent as opposed to specifically for bus passengers. The site is still not up and running completely. The site looks like it needs a lot more work before users will like navigating through it. Quite a disappointment at this point of time. Would love to see how this pans out. Fingers crossed for you checkouttrip.com
Bus-tickets.rediff.com - Rediff bus tickets gives you more than one solution to your problem. They have a tie up with the Indian railways. On the search result page, apart from getting the bus details from major Government and Local bus operators it shows the possible trains that leave during the same day between the locations selected. Allowing you to compare the prices of the bus and train ticket and the indianrail.gov website is just a click away. Fast easy effective - truly impressed.
Bustickets.makemytrip.co.in - Makemytrip is slow, I know I don't have the fastest connection under the sun, but makemytrip takes forever to show results. Once it did show up on the page, it had some very competitive results. Makemytrip as a brand has a lot of patrons already. Personally not my favorite site for Online bus reservations.
Apart from these sites, there is Raj National, KPN, VRL direct from the Bus operators themselves.
I hope this helps you find a good site to book your next bus ticket. I personally will either book it on redbus.in, ticketvala.com or Bus-tickets.rediff.com. Will post some review on my experience soon.
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Very useful article for freqeuent travellers. I've tried a few of these and found them to be reliable most of the time. The best service so far has been from Ticktevala.com, since they seem to have a real all india network. I could use both online booking as well as toll free call booking. Also found their home delivery service useful during the monsoons when it's hard to go out.
My experience has been the same.
Though Takeoftrip is the fastest loading site, we could not find the routes we were looking for. It is good for South Indian travellers, I suppose.
Ticketvala.com has more number of routes than the others and a helpful call
There are also bus ticket booking sites for state transport buses from AP, Himachal, Karnataka and some other states. Tickets are cheaper, but limited number of AC buses.
Good service overall, specially for women travellers. No need to go and visit travel agencies now.
My company uses Ticketvala.com to book etickets on the Bangalore Airport bus shuttle service for our travelling executives.
It is much cheaper than taking a taxi to reach the city, and safer when travelling alone.
It is Very usefull i have booked the ticket in red bus and they are very relayable .You can try Booking Ticket through Travel Equations,Near Velachery Police Station ,Velachery ,Chennai -4 also the they have the TI UP with all those on line services.They also helping us Lot in Booking the tickets . PH 044 43036698,43036246,9840707132
Nice article. I just came across a site for online bus booking called www.travelyaari.com. Its started by some IIM Ahmedabad grads I guess.
They currently have inventory for Western India. Have a look! I regularly used to use other sites, but seems like Travelyaari has the largest inventory in West India
There model is also a little unique. Their about us page suggests that they deploy some reservation system at the operators office to get live inventory on their site
All their results are real time. There is no quota or no request based booking like we see in redbus
Its a nice user interface as well. I liked it a lot.
coming soon this site www.fastticket.in
coming soon this site www.fastticket.in.... our services mobile recharge,cinema ticket(surat),DTH recharge,& railway ticket booking....