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The Election Commission vigil on UP politicians and bureaucrats is having its toll on the city’s air travel ticketing business.

The tour and ticketing operators in the city have reported nearly 70 per cent drop in the sale of tickets for domestic and international travel in the government sector during the past fortnight.

However, the tour operators say the loss is being more than compensated by the commencement of a new tourist season in March-May period where ticket and hotel bookings were being received from the corporate sector clients and individual tourists for both domestic and international tourist circuits.

A nine-member government delegation led by a cabinet minister were to travel to Hong Kong in the first week of April but the tour programme was postponed at the last minute due to the model code of conduct, a manager of a  prominent air ticketing firm told HT Lucknow Live.

“Nearly 50 per cent of the total airline ticketing made for bureaucrats is focused on foreign trips out of which 25 per cent are official trips in a year,” informed Vivek Pandey, branch manager of Pearl International Tours and Travels. He said most politicians travel in business class where the margin of tickets is very high. “There are low number of tickets booked but the revenue gets generated from the business class seats booked round the year,” he said.

The other advantages with booking tickets for politicians  especially in the international circuit is that they opt for “non-restricted fare” structure in which they can willingly change  their travel itineraries at the last minute,” he added.

The tour operators also get to lose revenue on politicians travelling on chartered flights where a number of MPs and MLAs join in the flight who would have travelled by a scheduled airline.

Vishal Dhagat, manager of P K International Travels and Tours said many ticketing agents refrained from booking tickets for the politicians as the latter changed their travel itineraries too frequently. “The government sector could be lucrative for the tour operators but at the same time it is bothersome for the small ticketing agents who sometimes have to offer ticket on credit to the politicians just to maintain cordial relations with their clients,” he said.

“There are too many cancellations of tickets just before the model code of conduct implemented before polls as many  politicians book seats on flights randomly to avoid missing out a flight due to time constraints’, Dhagat added.     

Email author: sannit1@yahoo.com