Railway Industry in France

TGV 1

1. Industry Overview:

In France, one of the most popular transport modes is train.  SNCF is France’s national railway, providing high speed, overnight and local services in France and beyond into Spain, Switzerland and Italy.

>> http://www.tgv-europe.com/en

Types of Train in France:

01-TGV

02-Lunea

03-Teoz

04-TER

06-Intercites

Railway industry is quite similar to airline industry, as it sells seats for a transport from an origin to a destination. The price depends on journey, class, and date of booking. Thus, railway industry can be placed in Quadrant 2, where its service has variable prices for a predictable duration. This industry also has the appropriate characteristics to apply revenue management strategies. Those characteristics are:

– Inflexible capacity: the number of seats on a train is fixed

– Variable and uncertain demand: the demand is different depending on the time of day, day of week, origin-destination pairs, and purpose of travel

– Perishable inventory: the unoccupied seat cannot be inventoried, and the revenue of that seat is missed

– Low marginal cost and high production cost

– Product can be sold in advance

– Heterogeneous customers with different segments, varying by age, purpose of travel, independent or group, etc.

However, there are some differences that make the revenue management of railway industry is little bit different than that of airline industry.

More difficult to forecast demand and to have the accurate number of travelers on a service: no check-in procedure, open tickets (rail pass) generally allow passengers to travel on any rail service, walk up tickets are very common (a large number of passengers purchase their tickets on the day from the station)

Less difficult to deal with overbooking: passengers are often allowed to stand during train journeys hence increasing capacity beyond the number of seats

———

 2. Space

Railway industry defines space implicitly.

Normally, a train has two classes: Economy (2nd Class) and Comfort (1st Class). The seating options and services are different for each class. The price is same for different seating options in a class.

 Economy Class:
01-Class2
 Comfort Class:

01-Class 1

Trains, especially TGV has “TGV bar”, which provides a wide selection of meals and sweet snacks available for purchase. Additionally, the TGV bar offers films on DVD, magazines, games for children, Paris Metro tickets, even USB sticks for purchase. There is also a rolling snack cart that comes to the customers’ seats.

01-TGV Bar

For additional revenue, TGV offers Premium service includes 1st Class seat, meal service, and access to the TGV lounge at the train stations.

Personally, I would charge difference fares for different seating options in each class. A group will want to pay more to have a Club 4 seat. A couple will want the Duo seat or Club 2 seat. And an individual traveler will want a solo seat. As the number of seat are fixed, we can charge for each option, rather than a “first comes first served” policy.

I’m also thinking about a mini-cinema on train, especially overnight train. Normally, the overnight train have load factor less than 80%, so the train can use one car to transform into a mini-cinema with a projector and a screen. When the train is busy, the car will be transformed in normal guest car again.

——

3. Time

Railway industry defines time implicitly.

Although the duration of a journey is determined, the railway industry sells a journey rather than specifically selling time. In addition, there may be issues that cause the increase/decrease in duration of the journey.

However, the railway industry also tries to sell time explicitly with the Rail pass. With Rail pass, customers can have unlimited travel on the national rail network of France for a fixed number of days. The choices are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9-day pass within a one-month period. Travel days may be used consecutively or non-consecutively.  Thus, the fare becomes rate-per-day, not anymore rate-per-trip.

>> http://www.raileurope.com/rail-tickets-passes/france-pass/index.html

The industry can sell time explicitly by providing Rail pass with weekly or monthly unit. However, I think it will not be effective as it makes the demand forecasting much more complicated.  Half-day unit won’t make sense as a trip is normally more than 3 hours.

——–

4. Price

Tickets can be purchased 60 to 120 days in advance depending on the route.

Ticket discounts are based on advance purchase, availability, and certain restrictions. Everyone is eligible to receive discounted fares by purchasing an Economy or Comfort class ticket in advance. Youth and seniors can enjoy specific discounts as well. Discounted tickets are available for youth (under 26 of age), seniors (age 60 and over) and children (generally ages 4-11) but should be verified with each product.

Price at 1 week before departure
01-Price-1st class-10AM-1wk

Price at 2 weeks before departure

01-Price-1st class-10AM-2wk

Price at 3 weeks before departure

01-Price-1st class-10AM-3wk

Price at 4 weeks before departure

01-Price-1st class-10AM-4wk

Normally, prices are reduced for 1or 2 week-advanced purchase, slightly reduced for 3-week-advanced purchased, and stay same for more-than-4-week-advanced purchase.

The physical rate fences are the classes:
01-Booking-Class

 

The non-physical rate fences are age, season ticket, and loyalty

01-Booking-Rate Fences-1

01-Booking-Rate Fences-2

01-Booking-Rate Fences-3

01-Booking-Rate Fences-4

As the rate fences are now already too sophisticated, I would rather consolidate these fences than create new fences to confuse customers.

 

(-Thao Ly)

——–

References:

http://www.raileurope.com

http://www.tgv-europe.com

http://www.sncf.co.uk/

Amstrong and Messneir, 2010. Railway revenue management: Overview and Methods

Schroeder, Braun, and Schnieder. Revenue management in the railway industry

 

164,119 thoughts on “Railway Industry in France

  1. Wow, awesome blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy.

    Sign up for free. Easy to apply at this link: 카지노

  2. I believe that you could do with some % to pressure the message house a little bit, but instead of that, this is magnificent blog. A fantastic read.

    Sign up for free. Easy to apply at this link: 카지노사이트가이드

  3. Hey there, You’ve done a fantastic job. I will definitely digg it and personally recommend to my friends. I am confident they’ll be benefited from this website. 먹튀검증

  4. Get the Excellent FiveM Server Pack at Discount Price. Explore our Trusted FiveM Store to Buy FiveM Mods, FiveM Scripts, etc.

  5. that is pleasurable as well as meanful. that is stylish website. Backlinking could be very sensible make a difference. you can have absolutely dished up a lot of people who drop by website and provides they usefull information. Jago33

  6. Ada banyak jenis permainan di sbobet. Mereka semua memiliki penggemarnya masing-masing. Di dalam Jenis-jenis permainan SBOBET. karena banyak jenis game yang tersedia dan dapat anda mainkan secara langsung. Jika anda penasaran dan ingin mencoba taruhan judi bola online di situs resmi dan terpecaya, segera daftar dan login sbobet di agen sbobet resmi hanya di 389Sports. Bermain Judi Online di Agen SBOBET Terpercaya 2022
    389Sports merupakan Agen SBOBET resmi yang sangat di gemari bettor di Indonesia maka dari itu disini ada banyak pilihan GAME SBOBET menarik untuk anda pilih. Sebagai bagian dari hiburan anda dalam bermain taruhan. Meskipun ada banyak opsi yang tersedia untuk Anda, memilih cara yang paling menarik akan membuat Anda memiliki kesenangan spektakuler yang belum pernah Anda lihat sebelumnya. Apakah Anda menunggu hiburan semacam itu? Lalu, inilah saran yang luar biasa bagi Anda dan itulah yang disebut judi online. Bandar bola SBOBET ini adalah tempat untuk dihibur dan menambah saldo bank Anda.

  7. Thanks so much for this information.  I have to let you know I concur on several of the points you make here and others may require some further review, but I can see your viewpoint. 파워볼사이트

  8. Hey I am browsing your article on my Blackberry and I was imagining how cool it will be on my soon to be purchased ipad. Fleeting thought…. Anyway thanks! best cc shop

  9. Thank you so much for the post you do. I like your post and all you share with us is up to date and quite informative, i would like to bookmark the page so i can come here again to read you, as you have done a wonderful job 비아그라

  10. I needed to write you that little bit of observation to help say thanks a lot over again with the spectacular ideas you’ve shared above. This is really tremendously open-handed with you giving without restraint precisely what a few people could possibly have made available for an e book to end up making some profit on their own, most notably seeing that you could possibly have done it in the event you decided. The creative ideas also served to be a fantastic way to recognize that some people have similar zeal like my own to know the truth more concerning this problem. I think there are a lot more fun times ahead for many who read your blog. go here – alternative medicine institute calcutta CC2BTC

  11. betflixสวัสดีชาว BETFLIX การเล่นสล็อตออนไลน์ ให้ทำกำไรได้เงินจริง ตารางโบนัสpg ไม่ใช่ต้องมีแค่การเรียนรู้ ความช่ำชอง เพียงอย่างเดียว ตารางโบนัส pg วันนี้ อีกหนึ่งอย่างที่ นักเสี่ยงโชคผู้เล่น สล็อตออนไลน์ควรศึกษาให้ดีก็คือ ในช่วงการจ่ายโบนัส โบนัสของการเล่นสล็อต ตาราง เวลาเล่นสล็อต pg ล่าสุด ว่าแต่ละเว็บ หรือแต่ละค่ายมีการจัด ช่วงเวลาไหนให้ ตารางเวลาโบนัสสล็อตล่าสุด ถ้านักเสี่ยงโชคผู้ที่เล่น

  12. I’m really impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it is rare to see a great blog like this one these days.. Fausse Monnaie Vente en Ligne

  13. Cheers for this excellent. I was wondering if you were thining of writing similar posts to this one. .Keep up the great articles! sexy

  14. Dapatkan pengeluaran sgp resmi dari singapore pools secara gratis. Keluaran sgp sangatlah penting untuk dijadikan hasil akhir taruhan toto sgp hari ini.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *