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IRCTC Partners with ixigo for Hotel Bookings
MUMBAI: Travel marketplace ixigo has partnered with IRCTC to exclusively power hotel bookings for IRCTC users.
Through this partnership, ixigo’s wide range of accommodation offerings from its domestic and international hotel partners and OTAs will be available on IRCTC’s web and mobile platforms.
Railway travellers can now go to IRCTC hotels and compare budget and luxury hotels across prices, ratings, reviews and amenities through this new hotel search and booking platform. ixigo searches and compares over 40,000 hotels from all leading travel websites and allows travellers to filter by offerings such as ‘pay at hotel’ and ‘free cancellation’.
IRCTC CMD Mahendra Pratap Mall says, “Our partnership with ixigo is a part of our efforts of enhancing service offerings to railway customers. The smart and personalised hotel booking options aggregated from multiple online travel sites will help IRCTC deliver affordable accommodation to users through ixigo’s simple and innovative hotel platform.”
ixigo CEO and co-founder Aloke Bajpai adds, “We are delighted to power hotels for IRCTC and extend our offerings for their large base of rail customers. As a company, we have a decade-long commitment towards understanding the pain points of train travellers and solving them. Through this partnership with IRCTC, ixigo’s hotels meta-search technology will be made available to fulfil the government’s vision of providing more convenience and services to rail travellers.”
IRCTC’s website and app witnesses over seven lakh train bookings a day and through this exclusive partnership with ixigo, it aims to fulfill the hotel booking requirement for thousands of travellers every day. Rail travellers will benefit from exclusive deals and discounts as ixigo will aggregate and compare prices across branded budget hotel aggregators and OTAs on IRCTC.
Launched in 2007, ixigo is India’s leading travel marketplace, with a user base of over 100 million travellers. ixigo allows you to compare and book from 120+ travel suppliers and OTAs across flights, hotels, trains, cabs and destinations.
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Apple bites back: the $599 MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac ever made
The tech giant unveils a budget laptop that packs a punch — and a lot of cheek
CALIFORNIA: Apple has never been shy about charging a premium. So when Cupertino rolls out a MacBook at $599 (approx. Rs 55,000) , it’s worth sitting up straight.
The MacBook Neo, unveiled Tuesday, is Apple’s most affordable laptop to date — undercutting its own MacBook Air and taking a sharp swipe at the budget PC market in one fell swoop. It starts at $499 for students, which, for a machine with Apple silicon inside, is frankly a steal.
At the heart of the Neo is the A18 Pro chip — the same muscle that powers the latest iPhones. Apple claims it is up to 50 per cent faster for everyday tasks than a rival PC running Intel’s Core Ultra 5, and three times quicker on on-device AI workloads. Fanless and featherweight at 2.7 pounds, it runs silently and promises up to 16 hours of battery life. Try doing that on a Chromebook.
The 13-inch liquid retina display clocks in at 2408-by-1506 resolution with 500 nits of brightness and support for billion colours — sharper and brighter, Apple says, than most rivals in this price band. It comes dressed in four colours: blush, indigo, silver, and a zesty new citrus, with matching keyboard shades to boot.
Connectivity is modest — two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 6 — but this is a budget machine, not a pro workstation. The 1080p FaceTime camera, dual mics with directional beamforming, and Spatial Audio speakers round out a package that punches well above its weight class.
Apple senior vice-president of hardware engineering John Ternus alled it “a laptop only Apple could create.” That’s the kind of line that makes rivals wince — because, annoyingly, he might be right.
The Neo runs macOS Tahoe, with Apple Intelligence baked in for AI writing tools, live translation, and the sort of on-device smarts that keep user data away from the cloud. It also boasts 60 per cent recycled content — the highest of any Apple product — for those who like their bargains with a side of conscience.
For $599, Apple isn’t just selling a laptop. It’s selling an argument — that good design and real performance needn’t cost the earth. The PC industry had better have a decent comeback ready.
