The Royal Orient is the erstwhile Palace On Wheels, which was taken over by the TCGL through an agreement with Indian Railways, and flagged off on February 1, 1995. The meter gauge train had a tour itinerary of eight days and seven nights from Delhi to Delhi via Udaipur, Palitana, Somnath, Delwada, Ahmedabad and Jaipur.

In a year-wise performance analysis of The Royal Orient, number of trips conducted, tourist potential, the number of tourists who had actually travelled and other parameters have been analysed in the CAG report. ``It is clear that losses were incurred by the The Royal Orient despite receipt of grants'' from the State and Central Governments to thetune of Rs 60 lakhs, the report says.

The main reason for the losses sustained by the luxury train, as analysed by the CAG, was low occupancy. In August 1994, it was estimated that TRO would be able to break even at around 40 per cent occupancy. ``However, the occupancy had at no point of time even reached 20 per cent, which was the main reason for the heavy losses.'' The maximum occupancy achieved by the train has been 17.25 per cent, according to the report.

Low occupancy, the report says, can be attributed to the lack of publicity among the target audience of upper class Indian and foreign tourists. The report says Indian Railways had permitted complimentary travel to 22 to 39 per cent of total tourists. But, the number of complimentary tourists kept increasing from year to year. The result was that the company suffered losses of Rs 91.85 lakhs from February 1995 to December 1997 due to complimentary travel.