NEW DELHI, DEC 18: Railway reservations invariably conjure up images of long queues. But within the next few months, reservations on special trains like Shatabdi and Rajdhani - can be made online. And before that, sites like rediff.com, visitindia.com, satyamonline.com, tafi.com and yatra.com will enable netizens to make reservations on airlines and hotels in India and abroad.The Amadeus Global Distribution System - world's leading computer reservation company is holding talks with the Indian Railways to enable it to make reservations on Shatabdi and Rajdhani trains. Reservations on the Palace-on-Wheels and Royal Orient can already be made through the Amadeus central reservation system or the CRS, which is available with travel agents across the country.Amadeus India, which has been around since September 1994, has a market share of over 70 per cent in the Indian subcontinent and over 2,000 travel agencies in 56 cities use the Amadeus systems to make reservations on domestic and internationalflights, railways and hotels online.According to Ankur Bhatia, President and CEO of Amadeus India, the company has been holding talks with Indian Railways for the last three years with regard to booking tickets through Amadeus products.``I am 99 per cent sure that it will happen sometime in early 2000,'' Bhatia said.Bhatia said that within a week's time, netizens can make reservations on flights and hotels online, via rediff.com. Even today, some of these websites and Amadeus.net provide the users with information about flights, destinations and access contact information of an Amadeus travel agency and other travel-related information.Once these sites get the Amadeus facility to make reservations, the netizen will simply have to click on a banner which will take him/her to a list of Amadeus travel agencies. The person can then choose a travel agency according to convenience and make the booking. The ticket still has to be collected from the travel agent, unlike abroad where it can be picked upfrom the airport.Jose Antonio Tazon, president and CEO of Amadeus Global Travel Distribution System, who is here to celebrate five years of operations of Amadeus India said that ``travel is the largest e-commerce opportunity in the coming millennium.''Even as he said that the Internet does pose competition to travel agents, Tazon added that many travel agents across the world have combated this threat taking a plunge into the web business themselves and making reservations online with the help of Amadeus.
