Hi, I'm curious about how ticket prices can be so different for the same journey. For example, travelling from Liverpool to London can be as little as £12.50 or over £70 for the same standard class journey. Of course, I'm aware that the earlier you book, the cheaper it is, but how does it work? I assume there's a fixed allocation of very cheap tickets and when they run out, the next cheapest tickets are available. Is this correct? If so, does anyone know how many tiers of these price bands there are and what proportion of a single train do they usually make up?
-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Cheap tickets, expensive tickets...
- Thread starter Gareth
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
I think you you've nailed it there.
There is a set number of tickets in bands and once the band are used up they go up in price to the next band. I think the proportion will change per each service.
Any idea where to get info on such things? If we take Virgin Trains for example: Liverpool, Manchester & Chester all have £12.50 as the cheapest possible one way, standard class fare. But Manchester has three times the service Liverpool has, so does it have three times the allocation of £12.50 fares? Chester has the same frequency as Liverpool but its trains are shorter, so would I be right to assume it has less than Liverpool?
Reminds me of maths class saying all that.
Reminds me of maths class saying all that.
Each train will have an allocation at each band. TOCs can vary the allocation by train - so East Coat trains from Leeds to arrive in London in the morning peak no longer have any £13 tickets available - they start at around £40 on these trains.
67018
Member
www.brfares.com will list all the various price bands, but not how many are allocated - I suspect this information would be regarded as commercially confidential.
And it can vary from day to day or week to week - the companies are trying to balance attracting people onto their services with getting as much money as they can.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
Well in fact they're just trying to get as much money as they can, whether that's a few people at vast fares as seen in peak time first class, or filling every seat at a lower fare.
Yes - mine should really have had a "per ticket" on the end of it.
Once upon a time, in a land not so far away....
There used to be Advance fares (Apex / SuperAdvance then). They were designed to fill empty seats.
The capacity management department would look at see that the 10:00 from Manchester to Euston regularly left with 100 empty seats. So they would offer most of those seats to people who could book in advance.
The trick was to attach rules to advance tickets to stop people who would pay £100 paying just £10. Those rules were "book 14 days in advance", "no refunds", "train specific", "no alterations".
The would also use quota controls to encourage people to travel on other trains. So the 12:00 Kings Cross to Inverness could be £50 to Edinburgh - but the 11:00 and 13:00 departures have £30 tickets available. This encourages people travelling to Edinburgh to use other trains and save the direct Inverness service for those who have only one direct train per day for stations north of Edinburgh.
To complicate matters (I'll use the 12:00 ex KGX as an example)...
You could have
10 x £10 tickets from London to Aviemore & Inverness
10 x £30 tickets from London to Edinburgh
10 x £35 tickets from London to Newcastle
10 x £15 tickets from York to Inverness
In this example, the cheapest is from London to Aviemore/Inverness - to compete with the airlines.
It's cheaper to buy a ticket to Inverness than it is to Newcastle - which is a reason why Advance tickets are not available for the journey to be started or finished short.
Also, London to Inverness is cheaper than York to Inverness, so someone joining this train are York should be charged a new ticket !
They could also put a journey restriction on. So the 0700 from Manchester could have Advance fares - but not to London (so Milton Keynes for example).
Then, along came the private railway. Advance fares were no longer just about filling empty seats but about making money. Some bright spark realised that the £100 fare from Manchester to London was split. Virgin would get £50, Northern £5, London Midland £20, Chiltern £15, TPE £1, East Midlands Trains £2.50, Great Western 50p and Cross Country £1.
So they offered an advance at £30 valid on Virgin Trains only. Two of these singles are £60 and this pushes up the money earned by Virgin by 20%. So now it's more profitable to offer an Advance than a Off Peak Return !
Trains are often full and standing - yet 50% of the people on board have advance tickets !
Imagine a hotel that was regularly fully booked and they only charged £10 per room per night !
There can be up to 5 bands of Advance fares. The amount in each band is commercially sensitive.
Try flying easyJet in six months time. Book today and you can get a fare for £20. Then it goes to £30, then £40 and up and up and up. The railway are just doing what airlines do. However, airlines aren't perceived as having "bands" - it's just that the fares go up the busier the plane gets./
There used to be Advance fares (Apex / SuperAdvance then). They were designed to fill empty seats.
The capacity management department would look at see that the 10:00 from Manchester to Euston regularly left with 100 empty seats. So they would offer most of those seats to people who could book in advance.
The trick was to attach rules to advance tickets to stop people who would pay £100 paying just £10. Those rules were "book 14 days in advance", "no refunds", "train specific", "no alterations".
The would also use quota controls to encourage people to travel on other trains. So the 12:00 Kings Cross to Inverness could be £50 to Edinburgh - but the 11:00 and 13:00 departures have £30 tickets available. This encourages people travelling to Edinburgh to use other trains and save the direct Inverness service for those who have only one direct train per day for stations north of Edinburgh.
To complicate matters (I'll use the 12:00 ex KGX as an example)...
You could have
10 x £10 tickets from London to Aviemore & Inverness
10 x £30 tickets from London to Edinburgh
10 x £35 tickets from London to Newcastle
10 x £15 tickets from York to Inverness
In this example, the cheapest is from London to Aviemore/Inverness - to compete with the airlines.
It's cheaper to buy a ticket to Inverness than it is to Newcastle - which is a reason why Advance tickets are not available for the journey to be started or finished short.
Also, London to Inverness is cheaper than York to Inverness, so someone joining this train are York should be charged a new ticket !
They could also put a journey restriction on. So the 0700 from Manchester could have Advance fares - but not to London (so Milton Keynes for example).
Then, along came the private railway. Advance fares were no longer just about filling empty seats but about making money. Some bright spark realised that the £100 fare from Manchester to London was split. Virgin would get £50, Northern £5, London Midland £20, Chiltern £15, TPE £1, East Midlands Trains £2.50, Great Western 50p and Cross Country £1.
So they offered an advance at £30 valid on Virgin Trains only. Two of these singles are £60 and this pushes up the money earned by Virgin by 20%. So now it's more profitable to offer an Advance than a Off Peak Return !
Trains are often full and standing - yet 50% of the people on board have advance tickets !
Imagine a hotel that was regularly fully booked and they only charged £10 per room per night !
There can be up to 5 bands of Advance fares. The amount in each band is commercially sensitive.
Try flying easyJet in six months time. Book today and you can get a fare for £20. Then it goes to £30, then £40 and up and up and up. The railway are just doing what airlines do. However, airlines aren't perceived as having "bands" - it's just that the fares go up the busier the plane gets./
This is something that the media simply refuse to acknowledge. They will quote the most expensive rail fare, a 'turn up & go' peak and often a first class fare, and highlight how horrendously expensive it is. Yet if you were to turn up at Heathrow at 8am and book a flight to say Glasgow, that would cost a fortune too.
It's not just with the inside of pendolinos that railways mirror airlines!
AndyLandy
Established Member
I don't think EMT got that memo.
http://www.brfares.com/#expert?orig=STP&dest=SHF
Apparently London-Sheffield has no fewer than nine different AP bands for standard class tickets, as well as eight first class ones.
Airline fare pricing is much more sophisticated. They basically don't have a walk-up fare. Well they do, but it's very nominal, as even if you walk-up you don't generally pay that fare, but something much lower. Basically they can charge what they like subject to market forces, whereas rail fares are highly regulated.
Airlines are usually much cheaper per mile of course, so I guess that's a balance.
Planes though must surely be cheaper to run than railways as you don't have miles of track to maintain.
If that is the case then it can't be easy for train companies to compete with airlines. Of course it may be that trains can hold more passengers or run more frequently to places than airlines.
If that is the case then it can't be easy for train companies to compete with airlines. Of course it may be that trains can hold more passengers or run more frequently to places than airlines.
It's down to yield management, and yes the allocations would be commercially sensitive and subject to expected demand etc.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Yes train companies have added costs such as track access charges, but then they don't pay anywhere near as much in fuel charges. I suggest a separate thread for such a comparison though.
I rather doubt TOCs have anything like the fuel bill of airlines when compared by passenger-mile.
One way to think of yield management is that it solves the problem that some people are prepared to pay much more than others for the same journey. If you set just one fare, and everyone pays the same, you exclude people for whom that fare is too high. You also fail to sting those people who can pay more (that's an equally important aspect).
It's a way to try and maximise income for the operator, especially where their costs are fairly fixed. It's better to get something for a seat than nothing, but it's also important to get as much as possible for that seat from those who are prepared to pay a higher price.
Like it or not, it's a successful business model, as seen in the aviation industry. The term "budget airline" seems inaccurate to me - "highly variable fares airline" is more appropriate.
It's a way to try and maximise income for the operator, especially where their costs are fairly fixed. It's better to get something for a seat than nothing, but it's also important to get as much as possible for that seat from those who are prepared to pay a higher price.
Like it or not, it's a successful business model, as seen in the aviation industry. The term "budget airline" seems inaccurate to me - "highly variable fares airline" is more appropriate.
Slightly OT.
The ferries are the same. Book in advance, you can pay as little as £20. miss the ferry and pay at the port for a new ticket, £130.
Happened to me once. Car blew up on the way to dover, got a tow back to Brighton, jumped in another car and got back to dover at 1am. No norfolk line ship until 07.00, but P&O had one going in 20 mins. £130. Paid up and we needed to get across asap as we were driving to Switzerland the next day from Calais.
The ferries are the same. Book in advance, you can pay as little as £20. miss the ferry and pay at the port for a new ticket, £130.
Happened to me once. Car blew up on the way to dover, got a tow back to Brighton, jumped in another car and got back to dover at 1am. No norfolk line ship until 07.00, but P&O had one going in 20 mins. £130. Paid up and we needed to get across asap as we were driving to Switzerland the next day from Calais.
That's a very good example. I guess you wouldn't have paid £130 up front, but faced with a 6 hour wait it becomes more acceptable.
Stelios (founder of Easyjet) tried the same idea with cinemas and some other businesses, and it didn't work. But for non-local transport, I think it will become the norm. Probably already has.
telstarbox
Established Member
Megabus tickets are all sold using yield management - tickets range from £0 (for promotions) to £20+ for the same journey and the price increases as the cheaper ticket sell out. I've never been on a Megabus which wasn't full or nearly full over the years, so the yield management appears to be very well-calibrated to passenger demand.
You do if there are no seats left at any lower price. So I have once paid the airline equivalent of the "walk-up" fare, from Edinburgh to London (we missed our booked flight due to weather conditions making us late at the airport, and were scrambling around trying to find the flight that would get us to London soonest). The only fare still available for the next flight was the full flexible fare (and only about 4 seats on that). I booked it online, but I could just as well have gone to the airline's ticket desk and asked for a ticket for the next available flight (assuming it was open). It isn't exactly the same as a rail walk-up fare, as you have to check in, and you have to get your ticket changed to take a different flight, but this is free of charge, making it equivalent to the walk-up train fare being valid on any train.
Of course, another difference with rail walk-up fares is that fully flexible Economy Class fares give access to the airline lounge.
I think Ryanair (spit!) doesn't have a walk-up fare, in that changing flights is always charged for. But the same is true of Eurostar for standard-class: even the most flexible fare has a charge for changing tickets.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Why oh why are there no cheap advance-purchase tickets for foot passengers? It is much cheaper for two people to go by ferry in a car than on foot
I've paid well over 200 pounds single on both Easyjet and Ryanair for tickets at the airport. For interest, I tried some random routes on Easyjet over the next couple of days. They have prices that would make Virgin Trains blush. "Budget airline" is not a very appropriate term.
There probably isn't enough foot passengers to worth considering it, foot pax will always be the minority on car ferries.Why oh why are there no cheap advance-purchase tickets for foot passengers? It is much cheaper for two people to go by ferry in a car than on foot
It's clear that the 'budget' airlines can only offer those cheap seats if some people are paying the full price ones... but I always wonder who these people actually are.
I mean, unless every other airline was fully booked and I was absolutely desperate (life or death situation) then I'd never pay top whack to go with the likes of Ryanair.
I mean, unless every other airline was fully booked and I was absolutely desperate (life or death situation) then I'd never pay top whack to go with the likes of Ryanair.
Perhaps some passengers don't shop around and just assume Ryanair will be cheaper for them booking at last minute.
AndyLandy
Established Member
It's likely to be all those people who arrive late at the airport, or miss their flight for whatever reason, or just have to book something absolutely last-minute. As you say, those people must be out there somewhere.
As for Ryanair, they're all about stinging passengers with bizarre charges for dumb stuff, like having to check-in online or whatever.
Can you imagine paying the full fare and still being stung for losing your check in paperwork, or having a bag that's 1mm too big to carry on?!
AndyLandy
Established Member
- Status