brixtonite wrote:

Looking at the eurostar website it seems the cheapest tickets for this
Wednesday are £120 each way to either Brussels or Paris, even though I
expect there will be huge numbers of empty seats. (easyjet in
contrast are charging about £130 return to Paris).

If Eurostar achieves more than half the sales at £120 that they would
have at £60, then they have made more revenue.

Eurostar's ticketing seems like BA's used to be - gouge
those travelling on expenses, and don't bother chasing those on a
budget.

If you had bought far enough in advance it would have been cheaper than
the Easyjet cost today. I would say their approach is to expect those on
a budget to book in advance.

This is in contrast to, say, the TGV (where most fares are
reasonable) or Ryanair (where the prices start at zero and are managed
carefully to get a very high load factor.)

I would contrast that with Ryanair, where the fares start at about GBP
30 each way, but they deceptively advertise it as "zero." Which
coincidentally is about where Eurostar fares start on a return basis,
although you save money on having to get to an airport.
--
Michael Hoffman