France
Ouigo staff are highly flexible, as they help passengers before boarding the trains as well as during the journey. Photo: SNCF Arnaud Février
the Ouigo website and are distributed electronically. Passengers can choose to receive SMS updates for another ƒ1 and suitcases are charged at ƒ5 each. Specific seat reservations are only allocated the day before travel to give Ouigo more flexibility. “We use an algorithm to place people in the train at the best location depending on whether they have baggage or not, to optimise passenger comfort, and to have rapid boarding and alighting at stations,” Dehlinger explains. Ouigo services were launched on April 2. In common with TGV, a yield management system is used to adjust fares according to demand. Fares range from ƒ10 to a maximum of ƒ85, which compares very favourably with TGV where the equivalent second-class fare would be ƒ140. A flat fare of ƒ5 is charged for children up to 12-years-old accompanying an adult, which makes Ouigo very attractive to families. As a result, children have made up more than 20% of passengers so far, which has presented a new challenge. “With
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so many children travelling, we have had to give staff a special kit to use when the children are sick,” Dehlinger explains. “We have carried slightly more passengers than expected, but the revenue is a little less than forecast because we offered a lot of low fares to launch the brand,” Dehlinger told me on May 15. Ouigo expects to reach breakeven within three years on a stand-alone basis, which means excluding the effect on SNCF’s overall business of passengers transferring from other services. The average load factor started at 30% and should reach 50% by the end of the year reaching 65% by 2017, and Dehlinger says they are already above target. Fares for groups will start to be offered in September, which should help to boost traffic further. “Group travel is an important part of the market because of Disneyland,” says Dehlinger. Ouigo sends passengers a short questionnaire after each trip and has had a 20% response rate. “In our
business plan, we thought that 70% of our passengers would come from TGV or iDTGV, but so far only 50% have. The surprise is that 25% of passengers said that they would not have travelled at all without Ouigo. The remaining 25% would have taken the car or bus and a few would have flown.” Dehlinger says about 90% of passengers say would recommend Ouigo to a friend or family member. Dehlinger is cautious about expanding Ouigo services or launching new routes either in France or abroad. “We need to see whether this new model works, and how our trains perform with the new intensive operation before we start to expand, but we are already looking at how the new maintenance regime could be applied to the main TGV fleet.” Ouigo is clearly off to a good start and in a very short time has developed some innovative ways of operating and marketing a high-speed train service, which is particularly relevant in the current economic climate. IRJ
IRJ June 2013
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