Do TOCs sell really cheap "last minute" Advance Purchase tickets?

[CaptainHaddock]

A few weeks ago I was looking to book a day out this Friday travelling with LNER, but when I found the cheapest advances were £20.80 each way I decided it was a bit too pricey for me.

Two days ago, out of curiosity, I checked again what the fares were and was pleasantly surprised to find the cheapest advances had come down to £8.50 each way on several trains, inclusing some which would be classed as evening peak.

I'm not going to say where I'm travelling from and to in case this is a glitch that might get closed down, but I was just curious as to whether TOCs, like hotels, review their prices a day or two in advance and, if loadings look light, reduce their advance tickets to dirt cheap prices? After all, any type of sale is better than an empty seat!

 

[TheManOnThe172]

After all, any type of sale is better than an empty seat!

Not true. If you can only sell the last seat at a price that makes it harder to sell seats at a higher price in future (eg by encouraging people to hang on in the hope of last-minute bargains again), then the rational operator will choose to leave seats unfilled.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Not true. If you can only sell the last seat at a price that makes it harder to sell seats at a higher price in future (eg by encouraging people to hang on in the hope of last-minute bargains again), then the rational operator will choose to leave seats unfilled.

Fair point, but as I said in my post, it's common practice for hotels to sell last minute rooms at vastly reduced prices, so why doesn't the same apply to train tickets?

Furthermore there is the argument that very cheap last minute prices might attract the occasional traveller who, if impressed by the service, might be tempted to become a regular customer in the future, even if that means them playing a higher fare?

 

[TheManOnThe172]

... it's common practice for hotels to sell last minute rooms at vastly reduced prices, so why doesn't the same apply to train tickets?

I think that is down to the level of competition.

If you run one of a dozen business hotels in a city, you have no hope of exercising any sort of discipline on the market - even if you want to keep prices high, someone else will opt for "marginal pricing" (ie accepting almost any price as long as it is above the extra costs of a night's usage, such as cleaning, laundry, power, wear and tear). So you might as well join in and do the same.

If you run the only hotel on a Scottish island, you might well opt to leave rooms empty rather than risk setting the expectation of deep discounts in future.

In most cases, the level of competition for rail is more like the island hotel than the city centre one. And where there is direct competition, we do indeed see very competitive pricing to try and fill capacity - eg Oxford-London where the existence of a frequent and not-too-slow coach competitor* results in Advance tickets being commonly available at £7 and sometimes at £5.40. (*Two competitors now, but X90 finishes in January: it will be interesting to see how fares change as a result).

 

[robbeech]

It's not unheard of for more advances to be released, but its uncommon. Did you look several times at the earlier date or just look once and decide not to bother? It may be that someone had started to purchase some of the cheaper advances but decided against it and they were reset and released after the 2 hour time window.
Another possibility is late confirmation of timetables, LNER are struggling with this at the moment, some are only 3 weeks in advance although with travel on a Friday this is highly unlikely. Another option is a reinstatement of a service that had been pulled from the timetable. There have been a number of alterations to timetables (causing many issues for passengers who are turning up to find their train doesn't exist). If a service is reinstated then they MAY release advance tickets for it, although usually at short notice they will not.

 

[Starmill]

It is very common on CrossCountry for Advance tickets to either sell out of be taken off sale a period of time before the day of travel (maybe some time the day before, or one or two days before that), and then for Advance tickets to be available at a very low price on the day of travel. In similar circumstances, the price might drop. This is mainly for short journeys.

This is so prevalent for some short trips that I would now avoid booking a walk-on ticket until the day of travel in order to check what is available early in the morning on my day of departure. The station pairs where I can think off hand of having experienced this on my own travel are Plymouth and Totnes, Ely and Peterborough, and Stafford and Birmingham New Street.

I have always had the impression that CrossCountry, since they pioneered the concept of selling Advance tickets on the day of travel in this way, have tried to manipulate the booking deadlines to maximise their ticket revenues from it. I do not know if they deliberately hold back some of their capacity to enable these tickets to be sold on the day or not, but it is pretty clear that they do go to some lengths to switch customers booking on the same day they are departing off flexible tickets and onto their Advances. This must work amazingly well for them on routes where they only run one or two trains a day - for example, on the day I have always been able to secure a very cheap Advance ticket on CrossCountry from Bristol Temple Meads to Cardiff Central. Taking fewer bookings in advance and more on the day also gives a greater degree of control - if a particular train is over-subscribed with flexible ticket holders, they can manipulate the availability of cheaper tickets more effectively to counter this - and vice versa for trains where there are fewer people onboard than might have been anticipated.

I have often wondered why LNER won't sell a cheaper Advance ticket on the day from Leeds to Bradford, Skipton and Harrogate. It would be quite daft to set a walk-on ticket for this purpose of this, that can only be used on one daily train (although Harrogate is about to get lucky in that), and few people would really want to book such a short trip in advance (though notably Northern have sold Advance tickets between Skipton and Leeds on a limited range of trains for some time now). On the day, however, I suspect it would sell well to undercut the prices of the Northern trains - there are many, many empty seats on these trains after Leeds.

 

[yorkie]

A few weeks ago I was looking to book a day out this Friday travelling with LNER, but when I found the cheapest advances were £20.80 each way I decided it was a bit too pricey for me.

Two days ago, out of curiosity, I checked again what the fares were and was pleasantly surprised to find the cheapest advances had come down to £8.50 each way on several trains, inclusing some which would be classed as evening peak.

I'm not going to say where I'm travelling from and to in case this is a glitch that might get closed down, but I was just curious as to whether TOCs, like hotels, review their prices a day or two in advance and, if loadings look light, reduce their advance tickets to dirt cheap prices? After all, any type of sale is better than an empty seat!

Many TOCs are pretty good at yield management techniques.

If they felt it was better to have higher fares until just before departure, and then reduce the fares, I think they would do so.

I am not convinced that it's really a benefit to train companies or passengers to encourage people to book as late as possible.

I am surprised that this happened on one occasion, but maybe it was something to do with the timetable being finalised at short notice, it it may have been an error. We do of course have forum members who could identify the cause if they were given the details, but I absolutely understand you may want to not disclose those details.

 

[PG]

It is very common on CrossCountry for Advance tickets to either sell out of be taken off sale a period of time before the day of travel (maybe some time the day before, or one or two days before that), and then for Advance tickets to be available at a very low price on the day of travel. In similar circumstances, the price might drop. This is mainly for short journeys.

This is so prevalent for some short trips that I would now avoid booking a walk-on ticket until the day of travel in order to check what is available early in the morning on my day of departure. The station pairs where I can think off hand of having experienced this on my own travel are Plymouth and Totnes, Ely and Peterborough, and Stafford and Birmingham New Street.

I have always had the impression that CrossCountry, since they pioneered the concept of selling Advance tickets on the day of travel in this way, have tried to manipulate the booking deadlines to maximise their ticket revenues from it. I do not know if they deliberately hold back some of their capacity to enable these tickets to be sold on the day or not, but it is pretty clear that they do go to some lengths to switch customers booking on the same day they are departing off flexible tickets and onto their Advances. This must work amazingly well for them on routes where they only run one or two trains a day - for example, on the day I have always been able to secure a very cheap Advance ticket on CrossCountry from Bristol Temple Meads to Cardiff Central. Taking fewer bookings in advance and more on the day also gives a greater degree of control - if a particular train is over-subscribed with flexible ticket holders, they can manipulate the availability of cheaper tickets more effectively to counter this - and vice versa for trains where there are fewer people onboard than might have been anticipated.

I have often wondered why LNER won't sell a cheaper Advance ticket on the day from Leeds to Bradford, Skipton and Harrogate. It would be quite daft to set a walk-on ticket for this purpose of this, that can only be used on one daily train (although Harrogate is about to get lucky in that), and few people would really want to book such a short trip in advance (though notably Northern have sold Advance tickets between Skipton and Leeds on a limited range of trains for some time now). On the day, however, I suspect it would sell well to undercut the prices of the Northern trains - there are many, many empty seats on these trains after Leeds.

Surely it benefits XC to sell a cheap advance on the day as they get 100% of the ticket price instead of a flexible ticket on which they get whatever percentage ORCATS allocate them.

 

[Starmill]

Surely it benefits XC to sell a cheap advance on the day as they get 100% of the ticket price instead of a flexible ticket on which they get whatever percentage ORCATS allocate them.

Precisely. Sorry, I thought that was implicit in what I was pointing out!

 

[alistairlees]

I’m sure there used to be an Atoc rule that advance fares could only increase nearer the date of travel, and never decrease. It was obviously intended to ensure that ‘The further ahead you book, the cheaper it is’ was true. So called advance purchase on the day, and late release of advances because of late agreement of timetables, have probably put paid to that. Anyway, I can’t find the document now.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Surely it benefits XC to sell a cheap advance on the day as they get 100% of the ticket price instead of a flexible ticket on which they get whatever percentage ORCATS allocate them.

Bit of an urban myth really: Dedicated Fares (ie. including Advances) are indeed 100% allocated to XC (in this example). Interavailable fares (eg. SVR, SOR) are allocated roughly pro-rata to the number of trains (and connections) provided by each TOC. But the interavailable fares are higher (in part because they offer more flexible to pax, ie on which trains and which TOCs they can travel), so even though the % allocation might be lower, the net payment higher.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

I’m sure there used to be an Atoc rule that advance fares could only increase nearer the date of travel

PS. There might have been in the past would wouldn't be permitted now under overall competition legislation (although finding someone to enforce this might be more of a challenge....)

 

[Haywain]

Bit of an urban myth really: Dedicated Fares (ie. including Advances) are indeed 100% allocated to XC (in this example). Interavailable fares (eg. SVR, SOR) are allocated roughly pro-rata to the number of trains (and connections) provided by each TOC. But the interavailable fares are higher (in part because they offer more flexible to pax, ie on which trains and which TOCs they can travel), so even though the % allocation might be lower, the net payment higher.

Nonsense. On a journey where XC would receive 20% of the interavailable fare through ORCATS allocation, there is every incentive for them to price Advance tickets well below the interavailable fare even on the day of travel. A dedicated fare priced at 50% of the interavailable fare actually represents a handsome profit on the deal. It only becomes a bad deal where XC already receives the lion's share of the ORCATS allocation.

 

[TUC]

All this shows the benefits of competition for the passenger.

 

[AlterEgo]

All this shows the benefits of competition for the passenger.

What competition?

 

[CaptainHaddock]

All this shows the benefits of competition for the passenger.

Except it doesn't. The journey I referred to in my opening post can only be made with LNER!