with it. The drop-down menu will tell you if you are trying to book out of policy, and you can’t proceed until you say why. This provokes the thought – can you go cheaper by booking a later train? As we move out of London to more regional hubs, meetings are being arranged for later in the morning to take advantage of lower fares.
“The system is pretty state-of-the- art, but we would like to see the CO2 information become more visible as we have an initiative querying whether people have to travel at all,” says Morris. BT (formerly British Telecom) is another major customer of Thetrainline.com. Senior travel buyer at BT, Celia Gullen, says: “The three reasons we need a specialist rail supplier are to control costs, to obtain very good MI, and to fulfil our duty of care. We have a feed from Thetrainline.com into our security system, so if there are any incidents
on the rail network, we know about them.
“The only thing causing us concern is that season tickets are not yet bookable on the system. If someone needs a weekly or monthly ticket as they are visiting a customer regularly, that has to be booked separately.” Monica Dingwall recently moved to bookmakers William Hill, having
“The three reasons we need a specialist rail supplier are to control costs, to obtain very good MI, and to fulfil our duty of care”
introduced a self-booking system in her previous job, and hopes to do the same at her new employer. William Hill uses Evolvi in conjunction with a TMC, but self-booking has not yet been adopted. “Education is absolutely critical, and this is
where the systems could help more,” she says. “The novice user doesn’t understand all the different fare types, so interactive online training would be useful. Plain English would be a good idea – such as ‘fixed ticket’ rather than ‘Anytime’. “The systems providers also need to work more closely with train operators to ensure that all their content is displayed. A small percentage of tickets are only available through a train operator’s own website, but I often have to explain this to the end user. “I am interested to see new entrants coming into the market, as more competition would be good. Cost is becoming an issue as the commission received by TMCs is reduced, and train operators can manipulate the timetable so that the first train offering discounted travel does not arrive in London until later in the morning. The people who actually book the tickets need to be very savvy.” ■
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route network. Google Maps has teamed up with Thetrainline.com so that users can have train, route and timetable information for more than 2,500 stations and 170,000 trips nationwide at their fingertips. Buyers are keen to see mobile ticketing pushed forwards, due to frustrations with existing delivery methods. BT’s Celia Gullen says: “With print-at-home or a barcode, you have the satisfaction
of having the ticket in your hand or on your mobile. We have sold a self-booking system to our people by explaining that they don’t have to queue at station ticket offices, but station ticket machines have become so popular that you often have to queue at them instead. We want to make things as simple as possible, and a smart card that can be read on the train is the next stage.”
The BBC’s Tracey Morris points out that
her staff travel nationwide, and that ticket machines are still not available at many remote stations. “People keep asking to be able to print tickets in the office, although we have walk-up kiosks in our main hubs,” she says. “People now use smartphones for everything, so they do expect to use them for rail tickets. But all tickets need to be linked to each individual’s cost code.”