Cleartrip is working on train search service and though the service is not part of the main product, one can access it from here.
As of now, the service allows one to only search for train routes, check fares, train/details, as well as check seat availability, but not conduct any transaction. In order to conduct transactions, cleartrip needs to wait for Indian Railways to open up their APIs.
Indian Railways plans to open up the APIs for OTAs by mid-2008 – the api function will enable OTAs and other travel agents to sell Indian railways’ seat inventory.
As far as cleartrip’s train service is concerned, the UI is neatly implemented and is way too eye-candy compared to the buggy Indian railways site!
This is good news. Integrated travel search is needed badly, especially with more and more people coming online from small towns of India.
Nitesh,
You can find integrated Flight + Train search at http://www.90di.com/travel .
Hi Khushnood,
90di is a decent start but there are many things you can do.
* Book the tickets?
* Add data from bus ticket booking services
* Phone booking. No need to have a full-fledged call center but simply offering an IVR application based on speech recognition will go a long way.
All the best.
Thanks for your suggestions Nitesh!
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I don’t see anything like imitation in this case.
This is a simple design of calender. Of course you can make it jazzy by adding loads of CSS but for sites who want to keep it simple, what innovation do you expect?
Train search is not now available in rediff.com. l
Pl restore it