RCOM joins hands with Yatra.com for air bookings

Mumbai, July 25: Reliance Communications (RCom), an Anil Ambani promoted entity, and travel portal Yatra.com has launched a mobile service to provide hotel and air ticket bookings in all Reliance Mobile handsets.

The service offered by Yatra Online Pvt Ltd of Yatra.com can be accessed using Reliance Mobile World (R World), the multi-media application suite of Reliance Communications.

RCOM Head (Business&Marketing) Krishna Durbha said ''Mobiles today have simplified many services and made them accessible to millions of Indians. Booking hotels, railway and air tickets is now only a few clicks away, for millions of Reliance subscribers.'' The association will bring convenience to the users across the country. Yatra has been offering attractive choices in air fares and hotel bookings. Hence, consumers can now make all their travel plans from Reliance Mobile phones and enjoy the cost and comfort benefits, he added.

Over the Reliance Mobile phone the service allows users to enter request for hotels and air travel bookings via an interface of Reliance Mobile World. The customers just need to provide basic information like date of travel and number of air tickets required to make the bookings on mobile.

Subsequently, Yatra executives will call customers and provide them numerous choices from a database of over 1500 hotels and resorts as well as options for flights. The added convenience is that Yatra will offer the services on 'Cash-on-Delivery' basis in 15 cities in the country.

Similarly, bookings can also be done on the mobiles and pay by credit/ debit cards for completing the bookings.

''This tie-up will not only make services provided by Yatra accessible to millions of Reliance mobile phone users in Tier-I, Tier-II and Tier-III cities, but also take us to the next level of technology innovation. Our aim is to make travel easier and get closer to our customers,'' said Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and director of Yatra.com.

The application is the latest initiative that Reliance Mobile World now offers in the area of Mobile Commerce. Through which customers can book railway tickets, movie tickets, airline tickets, purchase lottery tickets and even pay electricity and mobile bills anytime, anywhere without the need to look for PCs or internet connections.

Reliance Technology Ventures Pvt Ltd CEO and Director on the Board of Yatra Online Harshal Shah said ''Since we have invested into Yatra, it has been our constant endeavor to leverage all new technology medium including mobile, internet to offer value added services to Yatra's customers. The tie-up between RCOM and Yatra.com, which has been independently won, has further reinforced that.'' Founded by late Dhirubhai H Ambani, RCOM is the flagship company of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG). RCom is truly integrated telecommunications service provider, with a customer base of over 34 million including close to one million individual overseas retail customers.

UNI