In message , at 12:37:12 on
Sat, 31 Mar 2012, Bruce remarked:
Isn't it just a case of them offering lower fares during quieter periods.

Are railways profiteering by charging more during peak periods?

Almost certainly, yes. The prime example is Virgin Trains' peak
services into Euston which are far from rammed full. Virgin has
chosen to charge very high unrestricted fares in order to extract a
huge income from these services even though they are far from full.
Lower unrestricted fares would mean more passengers would travel,
filling up the trains, but at a lower overall income to Virgin, which
is why they prefer the stinging, ultra-high fares.

It shows that yield management is more difficult with train tickets than
holidays. The (rail) consumers are more savvy and have a better grip of
how to game the system - which includes travelling half an hour later.

You can often get a cheaper holiday by travelling a month later, but
somehow that doesn't appeal to people with fixed vacation dates. And you
can often get a much cheaper room by "splitting the tickets" into flight
and hotel, then wandering around when you get there trying to find a
hotel with spare rooms.

The worst time I had with that strategy was once in Las Vegas when it
took me about 3hrs to find a hotel the first night (I had a hire car to
get around) then had to change hotels twice later in the week. Some
people will pay not to have that kind of excitement! (But if you are
going to gamble on a room, why not at Las Vegas...)

Of course, nowadays, you'd have problems at immigration not knowing
where you were going to stay the first night, but that's another story.
--
Roland Perry