Indian railways to promote the brand of rail tourism on select routes.

Indian tourism industry focus to Promote rail tourism in the country.  As the Rail department asked its zonal its zonal arms and public sector undertakings to outsource their ticketing and catering works to IRCTC and concentrate on branding.

“In a letter on January 3, Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani has asked all zonal railways to promote the brand of rail tourism on select routes.
Lohani has also asked rail PSUs such as Indian Railway Finance Corporation and Ircon International, and zonal railways to give the catering contracts for all events, seminars and programmes held outside rail premises to IRCTC, the railways' catering and tourism arm.”

He has asked them to identify tourist and luxury trains and brand them both on the interior and exterior. He addressed one of the major objectives of the travel community which said that the running schedules of such trains were not made clear. In order to cut down on delays, the board has now entrusted the Director, Coaching as the nodal officer for luxury trains.
The executive can now be directly approached for approval on any scheduling issues, instead of the zonal railways.

Sources say that the board now take initiative to promote rail tourism seriously with state tourism departments.