Delhi trips will shortly be conducted by electric buses.

26 Apr 2023

Delhi Tourism will soon ink a memorandum of understanding with Delhi Transport Corporation to hire electric buses to run conducted tours in the capital. While the tourism department has made the arrangements to brand these buses in special wrapping promoting tourism in the city and the upcoming G20 Summit, officials said DTC is awaiting final approval from the transport minister before signing the MOU."We are taking six electric buses from DTC. These buses will be branded to give them a distinct look and make them easily recognisable even from a distance," said a senior Delhi government official. "The training of guides who will be available on board has already started. We hope to sign the MoU with DTC by the end of this month and the service will start soon after." said the official. To originate from Delhi Tourism's reservation office near Coffee Home on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, the tourist buses will run on theme-based routes and will cover the city's monuments, museums, popular markets, shopping malls, food-joints and other popular places. It will culminate at the same location in the evening.The government had earlier planned to restart the hop on hop off service but later decided to run conducted tours considering summers was not the tourist season in Delhi and HOHO may not get the desired number of guests to sustain the facility for long.

The tourism department's conducted tour facility will be similar to the DTC's Delhi Darshan' service, which was operational before the Colvid pandemic hit the country. While Delhi Darshan buses ran on a single route covering just seven sites of tourist attraction, conducted tours of the tourism department will be run on different circuits and will include multiple places of interest.

While all prominent monuments such as Red Fort, Old Fort, Humayun's Tomb, Qutub Minar and many others have been clubbed together in one circuit, markets like Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place, Janpath, Khan Market and Sarojini Nagar have been put together in another group.

The trained guides will make guests on board aware about the history of the city as well as each tourist spot where the buses will halt.

While HOHO service, which was started by the Congress government in partnership with a concessionaire, never proved to be a profitable option and had to be shut within a few years, DTC's Delhi Darshan, an economical site-seeing facility, ran for several years and both locals and tourists from other states and countries travelled on those buses.