By IndiaHub 
This leads to many travelers cancelling their plans or facing excessive levels of anxiety till the early confirmation of the ticket or preparation of the final chart before the departure of the train. Wouldn’t you wish somebody would offer you help and assure you about the ticket being confirmed?
To address this problem several private travel platforms like MakeMyTrip, Ixigo and more recently redBus launched a ‘travel guarantee’ feature.
Read below to know more about this travel guarantee feature using which travellers can either get up to 3 times the money paid for a waitlist railway ticket booking if it’s not confirmed.
What is the travel guarantee feature launched by several private travel websites?
The basic core iteration of travel guarantee feature by Ixigo, RedBus and MakeMyTrip are the same. Under the travel guarantee feature, you pay a small money upfront for booking a waitlist or RAC quota railway ticket. If your waitlist ticket does not get confirmed, then you will get the full refund for this ticket and additional money in the form of travel vouchers of the respective platform.
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In case RAC tickets are not confirmed, you will typically get the ticket’s price as a refund if you opt for travel guarantee feature. Some ticket booking platforms may also offer travel vouchers.
Here’s how it works:
Scenario 1 – Waitlisted ticket booking
You are trying to book Howrah Rajdhani (train number 12302) from New Delhi to Howrah and in the 3AC coach the status is waitlist 20.
This means 20 people are already waiting in line before you for a confirmed 3AC ticket on this Rajdhani express. So, you pay Rs 500 as travel guarantee charges in addition to the train ticket price to any of these private travel companies and in return you get any of these two things:
- Up to three times the money paid for this 3AC ticket if the booking is not confirmed till the time of preparation of the train’s chart, or
- A fully confirmed booking ticket.
A 3AC ticket on this train for this particular route costs Rs 3020 and as seen from this image below, Ixigo is charging Rs 1389 for travel guarantee fee since there the current status is 30 waitlist (WL30). So, by paying Rs 1389 you can get up to Rs 9020 (Rs 3020 refund to your bank account and Rs 6000 in travel vouchers) in case the waitlist ticket is not confirmed.
Source: Ixigo website as on June 3, 2025
Dinesh Kumar Kotha, CEO, ixigo Trains and ConfirmTkt, says: “Travel Guarantee feature is designed to solve one of the most frustrating challenges faced by millions – waitlisted tickets that don’t get confirmed, even when the probability is high. We built this product from a deeply human insight: travellers often rely solely on their waitlisted tickets without making alternate plans, only to be left stranded when their ticket doesn’t clear. With last-minute flight and bus fares often spiking, the lack of a confirmed seat becomes both stressful and expensive. By leveraging our proprietary data science models and our strong multi-modal presence across trains, buses, and flights, we’ve created a smart safety net that empowers travellers.”
Scenario 2 – RAC ticket booking
You are going from Delhi to Mumbai and only Reservation against cancellation (RAC) tickets are available. The difference between waitlist and RAC railway tickets is that in RAC you can travel in the train by sharing your berth with another person. In waitlist tickets, you cannot board the train if the ticket is not confirmed. So, in this scenario as well you can use the travel guarantee feature. In this image below you can see how by paying Rs 787 you can get the travel guarantee feature on redBus. If the RAC ticket is not confirmed into a full ticket, you can get Rs 1,785 (the fare of the train) and Rs 3,570 as travel voucher for future booking.
Source: Redbus.in
“Tatkal booking is one of the most stressful moments in an Indian rail traveller’s journey. There’s a narrow window, limited supply, and low confirmation rates, especially for waitlisted Tatkal tickets. We saw that users wanted to book tickets but at times they held back due to uncertainty. That’s what prompted us to build ‘Seat Guarantee for tatkal tickets’. It’s a tech-led solution designed to unlock trust and confidence in last-minute train travel. With this offering, we’re not just solving a functional problem, we’re helping millions of users make more assured, anxiety-free booking decisions in critical travel moments” said Prakash Sangam, CEO, redBus.
Sangam said: “The Seat Guarantee feature is currently available on select high-demand routes and trains under the Tatkal quota. It applies to waitlisted Tatkal tickets booked on these trains via the redRail platform. Over time, we aim to scale this across a wider set of trains and routes. The feature is also live for general quota waitlisted tickets.”
How much does travel guarantee cost?
We have done a comparative analysis of train route- New Delhi (NDLS) to Howrah (HWH) for Kolkata Rajdhani Express (12306) train journey on June 13, 2025.
Here’s a table showing how much travel guarantee costs:
Train ticket status for 3AC coach in train number 12306 on June 13, 2025: Waiting list 22 as of June 4, 2025, 1PM
Source: Respective travel platform
Is the travel guarantee feature a gimmick?
Ayush Patodia, Associate Vice President, Avalon Consulting explains the science behind this travel guarantee feature and why it’s not a gimmick.
Patodia says: “Data science and behavioral analytics are at the core of these travel guarantee offerings. Platforms like Ixigo, redBus and MakeMyTrip analyze vast historical datasets—PNR movement patterns, train-specific confirmation trends, seasonal booking behavior—to accurately predict the likelihood of ticket confirmation.”
Patodia adds: “These insights allow them to assess risk at a granular level and price the guarantee accordingly. Additionally, behavioral analytics help identify user segments more likely to purchase peace-of-mind services. The scale of these platforms enables risk pooling, wherein losses from a few unconfirmed tickets are offset by premiums collected from many low-risk users. Fundamentally, this is a hedging product: real-time analytics minimize exposure while maximizing user trust.
Patodia explains: “IRCTC processes about 80 lakh to 1 crore train ticket bookings daily. Let’s assume platforms like Ixigo, redBus and MakeMyTrip together account for just 10% of that—i.e., about 10 lakh tickets/day. If even 5% of these travelers opt for the travel guarantee at an average premium of say Rs 30, that’s Rs 15 lakh/day in revenue. Historical data suggests that only 1–2% of waitlisted tickets fail to confirm, and train cancellations are even lower (about 0.2–0.5%). So, payout exposure remains limited. Even if 2,000 claims are paid daily at Rs 300 each (3x refund), that’s Rs 6 lakh in cost—leaving a margin of Rs 9 lakh. The economics are favorable due to low-risk incidence, high predictability, and risk pooling at scale.”