Advance Tickets Do Prices Fluctuate?

[dave87016]

Several months ago I booked a advance Leeds to Inverkeithing ticket 1st class ticket several days before booking it it was £50 plus I cant remember exactly what price then on the day of booking it was £28

Similarly for weeks now the 10:06am from Paddington to Paignton on 20th January was £79 first class advance single with railcard, this morning I decided to book it only to find it was now £37:60 for the same ticket so I snapped it up as there was 7 left

have train companies decided to fluctuate the advances prices ? or lower the advance prices if the more expensive tier is not selling well?

 

[DaiGog]

Several months ago I booked a advance Leeds to Inverkeithing ticket 1st class ticket several days before booking it it was £50 plus I cant remember exactly what price then on the day of booking it was £28

Similarly for weeks now the 10:06am from Paddington to Paignton on 20th January was £79 first class advance single with railcard, this morning I decided to book it only to find it was now £37:60 for the same ticket so I snapped it up as there was 7 left

have train companies decided to fluctuate the advances prices ? or lower the advance prices if the more expensive tier is not selling well?

Yes, prices can go up or down depending on factors such as how well they are selling, what your competitors are charging, and so on. You will notice that some TOCs no longer push the message that the earlier you book, the cheaper your ticket is likely to be, for this very reason.

 

[dave87016]

Thanks for your reply DaiGog, is this new? because I have never noticed in all the years that I have been booking tickets online? As I thought the early you book the cheaper it is as that what TOCs seem to encourage passengers to do that is why they are cheap

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Several months ago I booked a advance Leeds to Inverkeithing ticket 1st class ticket several days before booking it it was £50 plus I cant remember exactly what price then on the day of booking it was £28

Similarly for weeks now the 10:06am from Paddington to Paignton on 20th January was £79 first class advance single with railcard, this morning I decided to book it only to find it was now £37:60 for the same ticket so I snapped it up as there was 7 left

have train companies decided to fluctuate the advances prices ? or lower the advance prices if the more expensive tier is not selling well?

If you look on BRFares you'll see a whole raft of different advance ticket types for different amounts even though the Terms and conditions are usually identical. The link below fro example shows all the Leeds to Inverkeithing fares.

http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=LDS&dest=INK

 

[dave87016]

Thanks for your reply CaptainHaddock I am talking about the same train same ticket type, the Leeds to Inverkeithing journey was direct EC hst the 10:06am from Paddington to Paignton is GWR

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, prices can go up or down depending on factors such as how well they are selling, what your competitors are charging, and so on. You will notice that some TOCs no longer push the message that the earlier you book, the cheaper your ticket is likely to be, for this very reason.

They could follow sleasyJet in offering a guarantee of this - if you notice a lower price you can claim the difference back, but they know full well that most people won't, just like many people lose those "money off your next shop" vouchers supermarkets give when they charge more than a competitor.
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One thing that is possible is that someone else had the lower fare in their basket, but released it after you booked yours.

 

[dave87016]

I thought about that Neil but as I said the price for the last few weeks has been £79 and then this morning it was £37:60 and 7 tickets left at that price which caused me to discount that possibility

 

[island]

Prices rarely go down, but it's not unknown.

 

[yorkie]

Several months ago I booked a advance Leeds to Inverkeithing ticket 1st class ticket several days before booking it it was £50 plus I cant remember exactly what price then on the day of booking it was £28

Similarly for weeks now the 10:06am from Paddington to Paignton on 20th January was £79 first class advance single with railcard, this morning I decided to book it only to find it was now £37:60 for the same ticket so I snapped it up as there was 7 left

have train companies decided to fluctuate the advances prices ? or lower the advance prices if the more expensive tier is not selling well?

I don't understand the first question, but yes they could lower the price by selling tickets at the lower tiers, if the trains are not selling well.

Alternatively it's possible that 7 passengers booked on a lower priced tier Advance changed their travel plans and booked for a different train, releasing the tickets back into general sale.

 

[Starmill]

It has been hypothesised that when someone changes their Advance ticket, the quota goes back on sale at the one it was originally purchased at. So if someone made an alteration cancelling their reservation on that train it might make the price dramatically lower - but just for one available ticket. It's also not impossible that the train company add cheaper tickets later - this depends on how 'clever' their yield management is and how plugged-in their pricing team are. GR are probably the most capable of this on those counts, although XC are also particularly shrewd. I wouldn't really know about GW but I suppose it's possible. Most commonly tickets will go on sale at a higher price first and then cheaper ones added shortly after. GR in particular I think are becoming specialists at this sort of thing by measuring the results they're getting from their 'Advance period bookings' up to 24 weeks before travel for certain journeys on their trains. It's all about elasticities...

 

[najaB]

have train companies decided to fluctuate the advances prices ? or lower the advance prices if the more expensive tier is not selling well?

To expand on CaptainHaddock's post: unlike airlines who are pretty much free to charge whatever they like (meaning that you can have a plane full of people, none of whom have paid the same price), train companies can only sell you one of the pre-agreed fares that you see on the BR Fares website. They are, however, free to choose (within reason) how many they want to sell at each price level and when they choose to offer them. They may choose to not sell Advance tickets at all for certain services (generally the ones that are busiest) and make more available on services that are quieter. Different tiers of Advances are usually sold at different times as well.

In your example they may well have found that a train at a different time of the day was getting quite full and released some cheaper tickets on an earlier/later service to try and balance the loads a bit.

 

[island]

Actually, most airlines have a published list of pre-agreed fares as well, accessible via analogous websites.

 

[najaB]

Actually, most airlines have a published list of pre-agreed fares as well, accessible via analogous websites.

Who exactly do they agree the fares with seeing as they are no regulated fares, they don't have a TSA or have revenue allocation to worry about?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Who exactly do they agree the fares with seeing as they are no regulated fares, they don't have a TSA or have revenue allocation to worry about?

They sort of do - the IATA-compatible ticketing systems.

easyJet and Ryanair not so much - but these days they do communicate with the GDSs which does mean using standard fare buckets, even if they have a lot of them. They'll be £9.99, £19.99, £29.99 etc, but they will still be there.

 

[najaB]

They sort of do - the IATA-compatible ticketing systems.

easyJet and Ryanair not so much - but these days they do communicate with the GDSs which does mean using standard fare buckets, even if they have a lot of them. They'll be £9.99, £19.99, £29.99 etc, but they will still be there.

Much finer than that - for some routes there are so many, so close together in price (and changed so often) as to be meaningless as buckets. And again, they aren't pre-agreed so much as pre-set. There isn't a fares round and there aren't any committees agreeing the price for multiple airlines.

 

[island]

Who exactly do they agree the fares with seeing as they are no regulated fares, they don't have a TSA or have revenue allocation to worry about?

Just like rail fares, most airline fares* are valid on multiple airlines to some degree, generally to allow for connections. Airlines need to agree, bilaterally or through a third party such as IATA, the revenue split on these fares, not to mention the entitlement to sell tickets valid on another airline in the first place.

Much finer than that - for some routes there are so many, so close together in price (and changed so often) as to be meaningless as buckets. And again, they aren't pre-agreed so much as pre-set. There isn't a fares round and there aren't any committees agreeing the price for multiple airlines.

There isn't a fares round in so far as fares are not consistently changing on a schedule. But fares are not adjustable arbitrarily often, as any new fare needs to be loaded to the Global Distribution Systems, which charge handsomely for the privilege. And as mentioned above, they in fact are pre-agreed for the most part.

*I specifically state "fare" here rather than "reservation" or "ticket". As we all know, almost all airline reservations and tickets, once issued, are valid for only the specific chosen planes. The underlying fare basis can be the same for multiple tickets. An example could be the fare basis QWJBA21EU that once existed between London and NYC on British Airways. The usual way to travel on that fare basis was a BA flight from Heathrow to JFK. However it was equally valid to travel BA Heathrow to Boston, or Dulles, or Philadelphia, and pick up a connecting flight on American Airlines to JFK (or Newark). The underlying fare rules, not dissimilar from an aviation routeing guide, are published (in all caps) in various places.

 

[dave87016]

I am quite surprised that TOCS are allowed to include a cheaper tier after a tier double the price was originally showing for several weeks as per my OP on the GWR service, as TOCS have generally promoted that the earlier you book the cheaper it is

Though as post #2 says TOC's no longer push messages when the advance tickets are released had I purchased the ticket at the £79 price and then noticed several weeks later the EXACT same ticket on the same train was £37:60 I would be emailing GWR for sure

I can't say I have noticed this before and I have been booking my tickets online for some considerable time

 

[Bletchleyite]

there aren't any committees agreeing the price for multiple airlines.

There sort-of are, but only the IATA full fare that almost nobody ever pays.

 

[najaB]

There sort-of are, but only the IATA full fare that almost nobody ever pays.

That's the point: these are notional fares that (I'll go a bit further than you) nobody ever pays. The actual, real world fares are set by the individual airlines at a whim. I've seen this personally having the same flight show different prices not just on different days, but at different times of the same day or even on two different computers at the same time.

The railway has nothing on airlines when it comes to dynamic yield management.

 

[island]

As already mentioned, only the low-cost carriers have that level of price flexibility.

 

[najaB]

Just like rail fares, most airline fares* are valid on multiple airlines to some degree, generally to allow for connections. Airlines need to agree, bilaterally or through a third party such as IATA, the revenue split on these fares, not to mention the entitlement to sell tickets valid on another airline in the first place.

The inter-availability of tickets on airlines is down to code-sharing agreements and alliances. These are made on a commercial basis which is totally dissimilar to the UK railway industry where the inter-availability of fares is imposed from above. Try getting an inter-alliance journey on a single ticket (e.g. starting with a Star Alliance member and ending with a Sky Team one), I think you'll be looking for a long time.

I'm not saying that there aren't similarities between the UK railway industry and airlines, just that since airline deregulation they are more different than they are similar.