The SNCF wants to win back popular travellers, low-income households ready to take a little longer to get around. With this classic Ouigo train service, SNCF is targeting students, seniors and families. It is launching two lines: Paris-Lyon and Paris-Nantes, on which prices do not exceed 30 euros per seat, nor five euros for children under 12. Still, the journeys are much longer than by TGV. For example, for a Paris-Lyon, it takes around five hours compared to two hours by TGV.
It’s a way for the SNCF to try to face competition from Blablacar, and other cheap carpooling systems, or even Flixbus, these low-cost coaches or even cars that are often less expensive than a trip. by TGV, especially for a family. These “classic Ouigo”, as the SNCF calls them, are old Corail trains that the company has refreshed, with a pink and blue film to recall the usual Ouigo. But, inside, it’s a bit of a flashback in the past: it sends you back years, it’s “vintage“, says the SNCF: there are no electrical outlets, no wifi…
The SNCF has already sold 60,000 tickets for these Ouigo. For the moment, she assures us that it is just an experiment and gives herself two years to make the operation profitable. Knowing that it should not cost her too much because she uses old trains and already existing lines. On this occasion, it also inaugurates a new economic model, with tickets sold at a fixed price. Everyone pays the same price, regardless of when you buy it. If these slow Ouigo go well, the SNCF will open other lines.
After the crisis, the company is trying to regain market share because it remains in poor shape even if it finds good levels of reservations on leisure trips, for weekends or holidays. For the Easter holidays, for example, it has already sold five million tickets, which is roughly the levels of 2019, before the pandemic. But that’s not enough to compensate for the losses on the business customer side, where it’s harder: the SNCF has lost nearly half of its business travelers and is unable to bring them back to its lines.