May 17th - In praise of train operator apps

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2022

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

The sermon today is Smart Save. Never heard of it? Well, it’s the name given by LNER, the train operator on the East Coast main line from London to Yorkshire, northeast England and Scotland, for special “split tickets” that will save money for some travellers. You can only find them on the LNER app; a trial appears to be taking place at present, and they are fairly rare. But hopefully they represent another step along the road to sensible rail pricing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or actually away and having the time of your life.
0:15.5	Well, who can remember? Gosh, was it a decade or so ago? Choo-choo-choo Choo, Saving on the train line or something like that, it went.
0:25.7	Train line is a really interesting company. Of course, it doesn't run any trains. It has just moved very, very effectively into the space of, well, we know how to retail train tickets. And they do it very
0:41.8	well indeed. An awful lot of people I talk to say, no, I'm not even going to think about going
0:47.9	direct to the rail company and booking direct with them. And I say, but that's mad, Avanti West Coast, LNER. They will
0:56.8	give you an automatic delay repay compensation or do it with one click if you book direct
1:04.2	with them. So obviously it makes sense to do that. It just makes your life easier. It also
1:09.9	costs less because typically train line will charge you sort of 5% on top of your ticket price for their service.
1:18.5	And indeed, that helps to fund their extremely good and catchy ads.
1:24.1	So that's what they do.
1:26.2	Another reason LNER, for instance, has some perks. Two percent discount
1:30.4	effectively. If you buy a 100 pound ticket, then you will get two pounds back to use on a future
1:37.7	journey and they make redeeming that really easy. LNER running trains on the flagship line, I would say, and that connects London King's
1:47.6	Cross with Yorkshire, North East England and into Scotland, going as far as Inverness and Aberdeen.
1:53.9	And it's also really unusual because it's a very, very competitive commercial company that I would say absolutely is way
2:08.2	ahead of its other owners of various rail franchises or the franchisees in various parts
2:16.7	of the country. It goes out very aggressively to
2:20.5	compete, not just with other train operators, but also with trying to lure people away from
2:27.8	road and indeed air. So it's good at what it does. And it's doing something really surprising.
2:36.8	As with so much that I do, this was only because I was buying a train ticket.
2:42.5	And suddenly it said, oh, smart save, two pounds.
2:45.8	I thought, what smart save for goodness sake?
	...

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