London - The average ticket price booked through U.K.-based corporate rail
booking tool Evolvi during 2012 increased for the first time since the system
launched in 2005, rising 1 percent to £61.81, according to trade relations
director Jon Reeve. Though regulated rail fares in the United Kingdom rise
annually (soaring more than 50 percent in total between 2004 and 2012), Evolvi
users previously managed to lower their average ticket price through such
booking tactics as advance purchase and off-peak travel. Evolvi officials said
the system in 2012 handled 55 percent of U.K. corporate rail bookings.
Speaking here at a media briefing,
Reeve told BTN the cumulative
effect of regulated increases has been responsible for reversing the long-term
downward average price trend. The U.K. government in the past three years allowed
regulated fares to increase at a faster pace than inflation, including a 6
percent increase in 2012. However, Reeve added that "smart ticketing is
still offsetting fare increases, which is why average price only went up
marginally.
Moving
forward, lower average rail ticket prices may be hard to come by. "Government
policy is to reduce its subsidy of the railways and you can't have that without
an increase" in regulated fares, said Reeve. Meanwhile, some Evolvi users
are close to optimizing the smart purchasing they can accomplish through the
booking tool.
For
2013, U.K. regulated fares are 3.9 percent higher. However, Reeve said he has
spotted a new opportunity to save, paradoxically through greater use of first
class. Evolvi each year continues to sell fewer first-class tickets—falling to
8.3 percent of transactions in 2012 from 9.6 per cent in 2011. As a result,
Reeve said he expects U.K. train operators this year to sell more heavily
discounted first-class fares to increase overall capacity utilization, as
standard-class carriages are often full.
Many
organizations during the past three years, especially in the public sector,
have downgraded their rail policy to standard class from first class. But Reeve
urged travel managers to include some flexibility when rewriting their rules
because first class increasingly is almost as cheap—if not cheaper—than standard
class and of course provides increased comfort and productivity. Evolvi is refining
its policy rules engine to allow customers to write in this kind of
flexibility.
Evolvi
also is working on an automated refund mechanism (around 7 percent of bookings
are refunded) and plain paper and mobile ticketing. A trial allowing passengers
to print tickets will begin with Chiltern Railways in February. However, Evolvi
managing director Ken Cameron cautioned that the U.K.'s two dozen train operators
are not creating harmonized standards for plain paper and mobile ticketing, and
only when they work together "will we start to see some traction." For
example, plain paper tickets currently cannot be used for journeys involving
more than one operator, and they are only available for advance purchase fares.
Citing
U.K. Rail Settlement Plan figures, Evolvi officials said the value of
transactions handled by its system climbed to £341 million in 2012 from £286 million
a year earlier, while the combined value of transactions throigh competing
systems rose less dramatically, to £275 million from £268 million. Evolvi claimed
it has 540,000 registered users who booked 5.5 million transactions in 2012.