As usual, you will have to be among the first this Wednesday to benefit from the lowest prices. The more a train fills up, the more the prices increase.
Top start for train ticket reservations for the February holidays, synonymous with ski holidays. The SNCF Voyageurs ticket office for the period from January 9 to March 30, 2025 opens this Wednesday morning at 6 a.m.
Small novelty, SNCF Voyageurs is experimenting for the first time with opening ticket sales for TGV Inoui journeys between Paris-Lyon, Paris-Marseille and Paris-Montpellier over a period of six months.
It is therefore possible to book for these destinations for trips from January 9 to July 4, 2025.
SNCF: is the explosion in ticket prices scandalous? – 03/29
For the mountains, the company specifies strengthening the direct TGV link to Bourg Saint-Maurice, “to ensure service to ski resorts, in particular on weekends and during school holidays”.
She also reminds that the Intercités (cheaper than the TGV) also make it possible to reach the massifs, “day and night, by joining for example the Massif Central (Paris-Clermont-Ferrand or Paris-Aurillac), the Alps ( Paris-Briançon) and the Pyrenees (Paris-Tarbes and Paris-Latour de Carol)”.
First come, first served
As usual, you will have to be among the first this Wednesday to benefit from the lowest prices. The more a train fills up, the more the prices increase.
The SNCF repeats it constantly, the key word is anticipation, for a question of prices but also to have the certainty of being able to travel together when traveling in groups or quite simply to find seats on weekend trains big departures.
Minimum prices on trains do not remain so really not long. This is the famous “yield management” invented for the airline industry which has been applied for many years to the SNCF (which prefers the term “dynamic pricing”). An approach that is part of a logic of supply and demand.
Thus, the price of a seat varies depending on the date, demand, and whether the train is full at the time the reservation is made. A seat for a sought-after destination, during a weekend, booked late will be charged at the highest price. Its price could be three times higher than the same place reserved well in advance for a weekday departure in the early morning.
Problem, during booking peaks like this Wednesday, the trains fill up very quickly and as a result, prices increase faster than usual. From one hour to the next, the price for the same place rises quickly.
The Trainline platform has also calculated* what travelers were able to achieve by booking in the first hours. Thus, we obtain on average 50% savings for a Paris-Geneva journey by booking during the opening week of sales, or around 66 euros on the price of the ticket.
“In comparison, travelers who book 4 weeks before departure make no savings on the ticket price,” underlines Trainline.
Trains that fill up very quickly
The saving on a Paris-Chambéry can reach 18% on average by reserving the opening week of sales. In comparison, travelers who book four weeks in advance save only 3%.
And given a TGV fleet that is undersized compared to demand, the trains fill up very quickly. Still according to Trainline**, 61% of trains for Paris-Chambéry were sold out three days after the opening of sales in 2023. It was 49% for Paris-Briançon.
“Today, it is complicated, if not impossible, to get good deals by booking tickets at the last minute. We are seeing prices that increase as departures approach, and especially trains that fill up more and more quickly , so much so that some trains are sold out or almost only a few days after the opening of sales”, summarizes Christopher Michau, Managing Director France of Trainline.
In addition to anticipation, the Avantage card also allows you to reduce the bill with a 30% reduction on TGV Inoui or capped fares.
Bring in the competition
Absent from the SNCF Connect application, the competition, in this case Trenitalia for ski resorts, offers a winter connection to Chambéry and a new stop at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne as an extension of its railway line between Paris and Lyon .
The Italian railway operator's red arrows will serve the two cities (which provide access to the ski resorts) from December 15 until next March. One round trip per day is scheduled on Saturdays and Sundays to the two Savoie stations.
Enough to slightly expand the offer of the transalpine company (5 round trips per day to Lyon), significantly reduced since the major landslide in the Maurienne valley which took place in August 2023, a landslide which prevents its TGVs from reaching Milan in Italy.
*: Average savings calculated on bookings made on a selection of journeys booked by customers Trainline to travel between 02/15/2023 and 02/18/2024 by comparing the price paid for the same journey the week sales opened and the week of departure. Adult fare, one way, without reduction card.
**: Study carried out by Trainline based on the percentage of high-speed trains departing from Paris to selected destinations, for which tickets were sold out on November 18, 2023 (compared to the opening of sales on November 15, 2023) for travel during the period from November 15 to February 18, 2024, compared to all trains originally scheduled for the selected route and departure date.
Olivier Chicheportiche Journalist BFM Business
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