MUMBAI: A staggering 6 crore
bus tickets
were booked in an average 50,000 tourist buses on an
online platform
daily across the country in
2023
. This was revealed in the latest report of
redBus
, an online bus ticketing platform released on Friday. Some of the longest bus journeys undertaken were from Gorakhpur to Goa which stretches over 2000 km and 60 hours followed by Satara to Lucknow, which covered almost similar time and distance.
The preference for late night journeys continues, with 76% of travelers opting for buses between 6pm and midnight.
The second most preferred time slot was noon to 5pm, with 13% of all travel occurring during this time. Additionally, the popularity of AC buses remained high, constituting an impressive 63% of all intercity bus bookings when compared to last year’s 60%.
There is a spectacular increase in the number of seats booked to religious destinations. Tirupati and Shirdi take the top positions as the most visited pilgrimage destinations in 2023, followed by Nashik and Ujjain (Mahakaleshwar). Not surprisingly, Goa topped as the leisure destination of choice, with Pondicherry, Manali and Siliguri following it, the report added.
"The intercity bus network connected close to 10,000 unique cities, towns, and villages across 4.2 lakh unique routes. In fact, 20,000 new routes were booked in 2023," the report showed. Indians
travelled
4.1 crore km every day, with an average of 207 km on a single trip. Online bus booking continued to gain traction in non-metro and smaller towns - accounting for little more than half (53%) of bus bookings. States like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh Assam and Chhattisgarh witnessed the highest surge in demand for intercity bus travel bookings from Tier 3 towns, reinforcing the convenience of online bookings.
"Interest in electric buses as a serious and viable business really took off in 2023. A larger fleet of EVs was deployed for the first time, covering 600+ routes across India and there were 400+ services per day. In particular, EVs are doing very well on shorter routes, given that they are better suited for them," the report mentioned. For instance, routes such as Delhi - Haridwar - Rishikesh, Bangalore-Tirupati, and Hyderabad –Vijayawada, witnessed high growth in the contribution to ticket sales from EVs buses. In fact, Delhi -Chandigarh and Delhi - Agra routes witnessed a 150% growth compared to the previous year, on the back of EV bus additions, the report added.
English (US) ·