New Delhi: In a first for the bus transport sector, redBus, India’s largest online bus ticketing platform, announces the launch of vaccinated bus services across 600+ major routes in the country. This new arrangement guarantees that passengers of an intercity bus get to travel with vaccinated co-passengers and crew. Booking a ticket on this service requires the travellers to have received at least the first shot of the Covid-19 vaccine and they must submit proof of the same at the time of boarding.
Vaccinated Bus is being introduced in collaboration with private partner bus operators that have a customer rating of more than four stars out of five on the platform. Presently vaccinated bus services have begun operating across 600+ routes on redBus, with the crew and passengers having had at least the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.
redBus already implements various safety measures under its ‘Safety+’ program, which is a unique certification given to partner bus operators who meet the highest standards of safety and sanitization. These include deep cleaning of buses after each trip, compulsory masking, hand sanitization and thermal screening of both passengers and the crew.
In order to ensure proper execution of this new system, boarding for passengers who book their tickets on vaccinated buses will only be allowed once they produce their ID proof and vaccination certificate at the time of boarding. The travellers will also be informed of these requirements before the journey through e-mail and SMS. The partner bus operator staff will physically verify the vaccination certificates/ ID proofs for all adult passengers before boarding, with the exception of passengers aged below 18. Passengers who fail to provide the necessary proof will be denied boarding.
Speaking on the service, Prakash Sangam, CEO, redBus, stated, “According to a survey that we recently undertook with our customers, 89% of the respondents said that they prefer to travel in a bus which had all the bus staff and co-passengers vaccinated with at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. It is therefore evident that a vaccinated bus rids passengers of their anxiety to a large extent and restores their confidence to undertake travel, which they are all so eagerly looking forward to. It is also extremely encouraging to witness our partner bus operators stepping up efforts to support us in this undertaking. At the moment, these services are spread across 600+ routes in the country and we will look at further scaling this initiative based on the response to it.”
Vaccination checks are being done for the bus crew (drivers/helpers)
Some of the top routes across the country where vaccinated buses are currently operational are listed below:
- Delhi – Chandigarh – Delhi
- Hyderabad – Tirupati – Hyderabad
- Ahmedabad – Udaipur – Ahmedabad
- Bangalore – Coimbatore – Bangalore
- Delhi – Lucknow – Delhi
About redBus
redBus was founded in 2006 in India and today is the world’s largest online bus ticketing platform. After having solved complex problems of bus customers in India, redBus also launched operations in Singapore and Malaysia in 2015 and acquired a majority stake in Peru based bus ticketing platform Busportal (now
redBus.Pe) in the subsequent year. With this acquisition, redBus successfully launched operations in Latin America markets, Peru & shortly thereafter, Colombia.
redBus has globally sold more than 180 million bus tickets till date and has a customer base of around 20 million users. redBus is now part of the MakeMyTrip group (Nasdaq, MMYT) which is the largest travel aggregator in India with offerings across categories such as Flights, Hotels, Holiday Packages, etc.
The business owns three products – redBus™, redBus Plus™ and redBus Partner™, which come together to serve and address the fragmented bus industry across geographies.
- redBus™ is the popular consumer-facing travel brand enabling customers to buy bus tickets online. Consumers, depending on where they live, can access redBus on the web (redbus.in, redbus.my, redbus.sg, redbus.id, redbus.pe and redbus.co). They can also download the high rated redBus mobile app from Google Play Store and Apple App Store. We enable a customer to search for bus services on a route of his/her choice, reserve a seat and make a payment to confirm the booking, thus bringing the seller and buyer on a single platform to facilitate easy bus booking.
- redProWin™ is a cloud-based solution built for bus operators. Approximately 3500+ bus operators in India, SEA and Latin America use this platform for their day to day operations. The revolutionary inventory management software ensures seat realization and resource utilization, thus improving revenue and profitability for bus operators. Over the years, through the use of engineering & data analytics, redBus has offered features such as LIVE bus tracking, dynamic pricing, customer relationship management, etc., which have helped bus operators improve operational efficiency as well as service quality.
