EXPRESSION OF INTEREST Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation

INTRODUCTION
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited is a public sector undertaking under Ministry of Railway specially formed to handle value added catering and tourism services for Indian Railways. More than 8.5 million railway tickets are booked through IRCTC website, www.irctc.co.in every month. IRCTC’s registered user base is over 15 million. IRCTC tourism portal www.railtourismindia.com provides a range of travel & tourism services to customers including All Inclusive Rail tour Packages, Tourist Trains, Holiday packages, Hotels & Cab rentals. IRCTC would like to provide best value deal and high level of service to its customers with the objective of expanding its customer base.
We would like to invite Domestic Airlines content Management companies to power our Domestic Airlines booking engine. Initially, the bidder would be selected on one year basis and this arrangement would be done on an exclusive basis for the first year i.e. only the bidder’s content will be put on the website. The contract may be extended for further one year with the mutual consent of both parties.
INVITATION & EARNEST MONEY
IRCTC invites Expression of Interest from reputed Online Travel Agencies/ Consolidators of online Domestic Airlines content. The EOI must be accompanied by the following details along with substantiations for meeting the Minimum Eligibility Criteria as stipulated below.
The bids are to be submitted in a sealed packet. Sealed bids with requisite Earnest Money Deposit (Demand Draft of Rs.2,00,000/- drawn on any scheduled bank payable at New Delhi in favour of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited) shall be received at the Office, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd. Ist Floor, Internet ticketing Centre, State entry Road, NDLS Station, (Paharganj side), Connaught Place, New Delhi, on or before 02 Jan’2011; 12.30 p.m. EMD amount would be returned to all parties (after submission of the one year commission advance by the winning bidder). The bids shall be opened in the presence of one of the representatives of the bidders who choose to witness the opening on the same day at 12.45 p.m. at the same address.
The successful bidder shall be intimated about the award of the work and Earnest money deposit of the unsuccessful bidders shall be returned without interest on the amount deposited after decision of the case. The bid shall remain open for acceptance for 120 days from the date of opening of bid. IRCTC reserves the right to reject any /all bids without assigning any reason and shall not be bound to accept the highest offer.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA & CONDITIONS:
1.
Must be a reputed individual company / partnership firm/ proprietorship firm duly registered in India.
2.
Bidder would be required to pay Rs 1 CRORE (8.33 lakh per month) upfront as minimum guaranteed commission payable for the first year within 15 days of the issuance of the acceptance by IRCTC. This amount would be adjusted against the monthly commission pay out. In case of termination of the contract by IRCTC this amount is refundable on pro-rata basis. However the whole amount would be forfeited in case of the default in services by the bidder as broadly defined in the Annexure A.
3.
Must have minimum annual turnover (i.e. Gross transaction value) of Rs.100 crore in last financial year from Domestic Airlines business. The firm is to submit certificate from their auditors in this regard.
Previous Experience:
1.
The bidder should have previous successful experience in supplying the domestic airlines content.
2.
The bidder must have implemented a minimum of two projects of online domestic airlines content supply to other live websites.
3.
The web addresses of the same shall be indicated and print screens of the same may be attached in support thereof.
SCOPE OF WORK
1.
Fulfilment Support:
Bidder is supposed to provide all the fulfilment of the Full service Domestic Airlines & Low Cost carrier bookings being done.
2.
Call Centre Support:
Bidder is required to confirm that it will provide IRCTC, the inbound fulfilment Support (IRCTC branded) both on e-mails and phones through a dedicated Toll free number 24 X 7 (inclusive of all logistic costs related to it including agents, toll free charges). The bidder is required to resolve al complaints & queries in time as per best industry standards.
3.
Technical Support in building of a booking engine:
Bidder is required to advise/ help IRCTC in developing the booking engine for its Websites. The Bidder should have capability of both the Web services integration (XML API) & White Label.
4.
Price Parity and Discounting Flexibility:
•
That IRCTC would be provided price parity with the Airline’s websites front end B2C channels under all circumstances. It would be verified using Clause no. 4 in Annexure A.
•
IRCTC however should have the flexibility of discounting, under pricing or overpricing the rates (within acceptable means of the trade).
•
Permitting the IRCTC to offer discounts on domestic airlines bookings e.g. Vouchers to be redeemed against tickets.
•
The bidder should be willing to build this logic in the business rule engine on our site.
•
Proper collection and deposit of any taxes & statutory levies, if any in respect of the air tickets booked will be the responsibility of the bidder.
5.
Quality and Breadth of Air Inventory:
•
Bidder should have an inventory of all scheduled Air operators approved by the DGCA at all times (i.e. AIRINDIA, INDIAN AIRLINES, AIR INDIA EXPRESS, GOAIR, INDIGO, JET/ JETLITE/JET KONNECT, KINGFISHER/RED, PARAMOUNT, SPICEJET). And also the new air carrier which is introduced in due course.
•
In terms of the breadth of the inventory, bidder should display all flights as available of above mentioned airlines.
•
Successful bidder shall ensure that all airlines would be made available and all available sectors are made available to IRCTC at all times. It would be verified using Clause no. 4 in Annexure A.
•
Inventory should cover all category domestic airlines at all times( low cost airlines to GDS airlines)
6.
Bidder would provide sufficient and market friendly payment options to the customers.
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At least one Online Credit Card payment gateway (ICICI or HDFC) & one more as a backup payment gateway (service provided by any Bank including above mentioned)
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Leading bank’s net banking options (minimum 4 out of the following – HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Citi Debit, SBI Bank, PNB bank & Axis bank).
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Leading cash cards (minimum 2 from ITZ card, Done card, I cash card & Oxi Card).
7.
Time period for Go Live –
It is expected that the successful bidder is able to make the White Label live within 4 weeks time from the date of the issuance of the work order.
Special Conditions
1.
All booking/cancellations/modifications/refunds etc. should be made available to IRCTC via real time MIS.
2.
Reconciliation of the accounts would be done with the partner on a monthly basis.
3.
All vouchers/confirmations issued by the IRCTC website, powered by the bidder would have to be honoured by the airlines.
4.
The bidder would be liable to bear all the extra charges & upgrades in case of offloading of the IRCTC customer. If any customer institutes any proceedings against IRCTC, the concerned bidder would be liable to make good all the losses incurred to IRCTC as a result of those proceedings, including the cost of defending the proceedings.
5.
That successful bidder would not use any of the pages of the white label, call centre, email, sms, phone, eticket printout or the database generated by IRCTC’s white label for cross selling of any other product or services. For penalty clause 5 in Annexure A may be referred.
6.
This Agreement may be terminated by either Party without cause by giving _90_days written notice to the other Party.
7.
In case of termination of the contract by IRCTC the minimum advance commission is refundable on pro-rata basis (8.33 lakh per month). However the whole amount would be forfeited in case of the default in services by bidder (as defined in Annexure A).
8.
The information provided by the bidder on all the Pages must be reasonably complete and accurate. IRCTC reserves the right at all times to disclose any information as IRCTC deems necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or Government request after informing the Successful bidder of the same.
9.
That bidder would allow the user to book the Domestic Airlines as per the normal & agreed flow with IRCTC, and give complete details of user access who have booked to IRCTC on a real time basis.
10.
The commissions would not be applicable on the cancellations but it would be applicable on the no shows etc.
11.
IRCTC provides a platform of booking to the successful bidder wherein the customer would be booking on successful bidder’s website which is white labeled on IRCTC look and feel. Therefore the Successful bidder would clearly demarcate the cancellation/refund/modification rules to the customer before he’s made the booking and on the voucher also. And that all charges would be within modest limit as prescribed in the industry practice i.e. website charges for the flight cancellation can’t be more than Rs 300/- per segment (excluding charges applied by airlines on actuals).
12.
That the bidder would provide a real time access to the Air booking system, where IRCTC may check at any point of time the bookings of that day, hour or the month. And bidder would share an MIS of Air booking with the following parameters –
•
Segment share by airline
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Revenue share by airline
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Average segment size by airline
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GDS LCC biz split & GDS LCC segment size
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Purchase pattern by airline – segment share for same day travel , D1 – D3, D4-D7,D8-D14,D15-D21,D22-D30,D30 +.
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Average segment size by airline for each of the above mentioned booking patterns
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Top 20 sectors segment size & share.
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Any other report that may be required by IRCTC.
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Price benchmarking for 30 select sectors (top performing sectors the previous month) with competitive b2c sites (Makemytrip.com, Yatra.com, Cleartrip.com, ezeego1.com etc.) on the basis of single pax and multiple pax bookings (to be used for the marketing purpose only).
13.
The Successful bidder is duty bound to refund the applicable cancellation amount to the user as per the agreed terms (maximum 15 days period).
14.
If the Successful bidder fails to comply with the terms & conditions of the EOI, IRCTC shall follow an escalation matrix to be provided by Successful bidder. This is without prejudice to any other action that IRCTC may take.
Selection of the Successful Bidder:
The successful bidder would be selected on the basis of highest commercial bid i.e. maximum flat percentage with all minimum eligibility conditions being fulfilled as per the below given format.
Financial/Commercial Bid
Bidder should quote one flat percentage commission value on Total Air transaction value (Base fare + Airport taxes + Transaction Fee + Service Charges if any i.e. total cost to the customer) done on the IRCTC websites (Slab wise commission would not be accepted). Payment gateway charges would have to be absorbed by the bidder.
Documentation Required
1.
Should submit last three years audited Profit & Loss statement and balance sheet duly certified by CA. They are also required to submit their copy of last three years Income Tax return.
2.
The Process flow of the proposed content supply should be indicated.
3.
Number of in-house operation and sales staff for managing domestic airlines booking should be indicated.
4.
Complete process flow chart for domestic airlines fulfilment should be indicated.
5.
How the sales and bookings would be conducted, complete process should be explained.
6.
Write up on Inventory management and Booking fulfilment, Handling of post sales queries.
7.
Explain Refund process & Mechanism of payment gateway.
8.
Write up on the XML/API capabilities of the bidder in this regard should be furnished.
9.
Details of sub-contracting (airline contracts etc.), if any, for sourcing of inventory, should be furnished
10.
Write up on creating and maintaining of domestic airlines content should be furnished.
11.
A declaration letter accepting all terms & conditions defined in the EOI.
Arbitration: In the event of any dispute or difference arising under these conditions of the contract or in connection with this contract (except as to any matters, the decision of which is specifically provided for by these conditions) the same will be resolved by Arbitration, as per the provisions of ‘The Arbitration and Conciliation Act – 1996.’ The venue of the Arbitration shall be Delhi. All questions, disputes and or differences arising under or in connection with this EOI or in touching or relating to or concerning the services, shall be referred to the sole arbitration of the officer/officers or persons nominated by the Managing Director/IRCTC, whose decision in this regard shall be binding. The fee payable to Arbitrator shall be fixed by MD/IRCTC. In case of any disputes, the courts at New Delhi only shall have jurisdiction.
The EOI’s may be sent by post in a sealed envelope by 12:30 AM_ marked
“PROPOSAL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR POWERING THE AIR CONTENT ON IRCTC WEBSITES”
Group General Manager (ITS)
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd.
Ist Floor, Internet ticketing Centre, State entry Road, NDLS Station, (Paharganj side), Connaught Place, New Delhi Phone – 011-23747134-05
Or Visit us at: www.irctc.co.in / www.railtourismindia.com
Annexure A
Default
Resolution
1.
Non- payment by Successful bidder to the suppliers
Successful bidder undertakes that it shall make payment to the Airlines prior to the check in date selected by the customer or ensure that no customer is offloaded at the time of check in.
2.
Check in related issues
The Successful bidder’s fulfilment team shall offer the following remedies to IRCTC. In addition to any one of a or b below; Successful bidder shall also fulfil the conditions mentioned in point ‘c’ (last option) on a best endeavour basis.
a.
Make the original airline booking available. (If possible).
b.
Upgrade to a higher category class type/ Airlines at no extra cost to the IRCTC and the Customer. (e.g.: economy class > executive class, LCC>FSC ) if available.
c.
If the customer does not wish to take any of the above choices, a 100% refund will have to be made to the customer in good faith in three working days; only as long as the service is not utilized. The Successful bidder will not invoice IRCTC for the said booking.
3.
Connector Downtime
a.
Successful bidder shall inform IRCTC of its planned downtime by giving them a written notice of 02 working days. The total down time shall not exceed 4 hours a month beyond which the partner must take prior permission.
b.
In case of unplanned downtimes beyond the control of the Successful bidder shall on a best endeavour basis resolve the same with highest priority.
4.
Pricing and Non-availability
- Bidder commits to the supply 100% of direct domestic flights inventory at all times or as mutually agreed. IRCTC would do a comparison of our site with 50 direct flights available of the Airline’s own websites randomly and share the finding with the partner on a weekly basis. Persistent non availability of the flights may result in the cancellation of the contract and forfeiture of the advance deposit.
-IRCTC would do a price comparison of our website with the airline’s own websites checking 50 segments on a weekly basis randomly and results would be shared with the partner -
In case number of the breaches in every calendar month exceeds four:
Penalty – IRCTC reserves the right to levy a penalty of upto Rs 50,000/- per breach. In case the number of breaches exceeds 8 in any month, IRCTC shall have right to terminate the contract with a notice of 15 days along with forfeiture of the advance deposit and debarment for a period of one year from participating in future projects of IRCTC, in addition to any other action that IRCTC may deem fit.
5.
Confidentiality of the data
The contract will be cancelled by IRCTC and advance forfeited, in case the partner is found to be using the database generated from the air ticketing for any other commercial purpose other than the original air ticket booking.