Does dynamic pricing encourage speculative or block bookings?

[rangersac]

As someone who has previously lived in the UK but who now lives abroad, a recent UK trip has made me wonder about whether dynamic pricing encourages people to make speculative or block bookings to potentially save on having to fork out for high priced anytime tickets or short notice fares. The journeys that I undertook included London to Manchester, Manchester to Horsham, Horsham to Nottingham, and Grantham to London. In all cases the bookings displayed in the carriages for the long distance operators on these routes (AWC, EMR, LNER) seemed rather at odds with the actual passenger loads on the day.

I particularly noticed it when I had to change the dates on my Manchester to Horsham booking a week out from travel, for which I had initially booked around four weeks in advance. Despite the journey being undertaken in the middle of the day during midweek (which I would've expected to be a pretty quiet time for bookings), the price for this trip had increased from £38 to £64, yet the AWC train for the portion of the trip to London was barely 50% loaded despite the carriage reservations only showing a couple of un-booked seats. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[TUC]

Why would anyone want to risk large amounts of money on speculative bookings?

 

[yorkie]

Why would anyone want to risk large amounts of money on speculative bookings?

Advance fares can be changed, so it's not necessarily that big a 'risk'.

Furthermore, they might want to risk an amount of money that is lower than the cost of a flexible fare, if they know they are making a journey but aren't sure of the exact time, where the Advance is significantly cheaper than the flexible fare.

Don't forget, companies like LNER are aiming to price people off flexible fares.

 

[saismee]

Certainly done a "speculative" booking before. Booked an advance for 15 pounds before advances sold out (an anytime flexible ticket would've been 50), only to be sent an email with a ticket an hour later which was paid for by the event! I asked about tickets prior and they said it was uncertain whether tickets would be issued for it - bear in mind this was an event hosted by a TOC. If I wasn't concerned with having to pay 35 pounds more then I would've waited and purchased the ticket on the day. I did not get reimbursed any of the 15 pounds spent.

 

[rangersac]

Why would anyone want to risk large amounts of money on speculative bookings?

Here's an example, you live in London but have a friend in Manchester who suggests catching up at some point, most likely on evening of the 18th July, but they may have to postpone closer to the date because of work commitments. The earliest you can get away on the 18th July is 16:00. Currently using the LNER search engine an Advance Single for Euston to Man Picc leaving at 16:15 is £52.50, but an Anytime Single is £196. So in this scenario I'd be booking the Advance fare given a) it can be changed to a later date as long as the same itinerary is kept so provides some contingency if the meetup gets postponed, and b) if it all falls through it's still almost a quarter of the cost of the refundable ticket that I would be losing.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

yet the AWC train for the portion of the trip to London was barely 50% loaded despite the carriage reservations only showing a couple of un-booked seats. Has anyone else experienced this?

It can also include those on flexible tickets being forced to make arbitrary reservations and then travelling at another time.

 

[Watershed]

A lot of people travel with walk-up tickets and make a reservation for one train but actually travel on another one. Or in fact they might travel on their selected train but sit in a different coach or seat.

The likes of Avanti and LNER don't help this by falsely marking their trains as "reservations compulsory" in the schedule data, meaning that journey planners are forced to issue reservations for the selected train even if the customer doesn't want one.