Heritage railway ticketing - best options , pro's and cons

I see that they are suggesting that the railway could claim Gift Aid on ticket sales. Whilst undoubtedly correct I wonder if they’ll actually will actually go down that route given the apparently poor results obtained by the NYMR which, if rumours are correct, carry a lot of ‘free’ passengers.

 

There is also the gala issue, which was discussed on the NYMR thread. (In brief, AIUI, that if you have annual tickets, there can only be a limited number of operating days on which those aren't valid, so that forces you to be quite selective in just how you spread those days out - which I'd have thought is quite a significant consideration for a line like the SVR which is known for having multiple galas through the year, and those galas sometimes being 3 / 4 days long.

I seem to recall the stipulation was no more than five days of full-line operation not being available to the "gift aid annual passes". Which is a two-day gala and a three-day gala ...

Tom

 

You either adopt the 12 month ticket route or the higher gift-aided fare route. The former tends to get more takers but the latter gives a true increase in revenue although with less takers.

 

All correct there, Tom. Another NYMR experience is that a lot of people are not taking full length journeys due to the cost and these aren't eligible for Gift Aid. I don't know what the traffic patterns are like on the Valley and whether this would be significant.

 

I think that's a really difficult question to answer.

As an enthusiast, I want a flexible ticket that will allow me to travel at will on my chosen railway. I tend to measure value in £/mile travelled, and I wince at paying more than about £20 despite costs having risen a lot since I set my benchmark. At the same time, I acknowledge that there's a minimum - so am willing to pay a lot more per mile for the L&B than the NYMR, as an example.

If I'm out with the family, my travel is more purposeful, and I'm looking for a fare that acknowledges that travelling in a group is expensive.

While I'll factor membership discounts into my thinking, they don't particularly distort my thinking when comparing prices - I adjust for frequency of visits.

When I buy a ticket, I want clear, simple, pricing and a minimum of fuss. If I buy online, I want a nice simple transaction where I can look up the prices I'll pay on a table and then push them through the booking form. As an iPhone user at ease with eTickets, I'd prefer something properly integrated with Apple Wallet (congratulations to the GCR for making that work) to a PDF that I need to save separately or print.

If I'm buying on the day, I don't want to stand in a long queue, and I don't want a load of choices or complications. If there's a good EPOS system that will take my details quickly and easily at point of sale, then I'll gladly Gift Aid where that's possible. But if that adds complexity to pricing (with/without, or annual/not), or I've got to go through a load of extra steps, then I'll rapidly lose patience - and I'm a higher rate taxpayer who will gain from the transaction.

Reading threads on the subject of pricing here, what interests me is how subjective even informed volunteers' understanding of numbers is. There's a strong suspicion that the NYMR scheme is "allowing people to travel for free", and the diesel basher who has had 100+ trips is often mentioned (as an aside, I've previously commented on NYMR struggling to cope with the idea of not charging full whack for everything, and that allowing new members to obtain discounts has led me to spend a lot more than I'd ever have otherwise planned). There's a lot less focus, certainly on here, about measures like yield per seat which would help inform understanding of how the trade-offs in an annual model work. The answers will vary from place to place, but my experience is that a slightly higher up front price amortised with reuse can increase the amount of cash actually spent.

In all of this, I'm focusing on pricing and ticketing - and ignoring the rest of the commercial proposition that the railway offers. But factors like frequency, start/finish times, secondary offers, train presentation, etc. all make a big difference too when I come to assess value.

And it's value rather than price that ultimately matters. After all, I can buy a cheap bottle of whisky for less than £20 - but if it's actually Lagavulin I want to drink, then I'll gladly pay a lot more.

 

Does that 5 say cap cover days running special experiences like Santa trains where normally it would be impossible to travel without pre-booking?

 

My understanding (open to correction) is it applies to days when a service is operating over the whole line. Since for many railways, special events are "whole line" affairs and also form a key part of most heritage railway calendars, anything that limits the number of days you can offer such events is obviously a significant factor.

(I assume on a technicality you might be able to get round that issue by allowing your annual "gift aid" ticket holders to access a special event for free. But that would then give a very strong incentive for a prospective visitor to buy a gift aid ticket for a regular operating day whether or not they wished to use it, so they could then attend each day of a gala for free).

Tom

 

Yes, as I understand it. People could pre book with their free pass and just pay for the present. However, the 12 month ticket covers a full length journey and short journeys are outside this as the railway is not fully open; again as I understand it. I’m no expert though and happy to be corrected.

 

I think that is what they hope people will do so they don't use it for free rides. I've been to several places on holiday and know I'll never re-visit in the 12 months but I'm happy with the price of admission so pay it. I think the problem with the NYMR is it is overpriced for those only using it once with the result that people are taking short journeys (i.e. Pickering-Goathland) as a result and therefore they aren't eligible for gift aid. When the scheme started in 2023 it was only £40 so that's a nigh on 25% increase. I've heard it said that it won't be continued in 2025 but nothing official.

 

Critics of the NYMR'all line fare often omit to mention that kids go free so for a family the total can be considerably less than other alternative tourist attractions. Gift Aid uptake is in excess of 70% with returns during the ensuing twelve months around the predicted 20% figure. The annual cash benefit is around £450k for what is tantamount to zero cost. There's always likely to be take up of shorter lower cost fares especially when the return journey is two or three times the length of some other heritage railways. The so called annual pass isn't really that in practice. The original ticket includes the option of one further free ticket which when issued entitles the original purchaser to another i.e there's a process of repeat validation which provides valuable marketing data. Like the airlines once an empty seat has left the station there's no revenue but the operating costs remain the same. As long as the returnee isn't preventing another fare paying passenger from travelling their occupation of an otherwise empty seat isn't a cost to the railway. Just as the airlines found any income in those cases is a bonus even if it takes the form of secondary spend. On the NYMR that increased significantly when the Gift Aid facility was introduced.
The underlying issue may be that heritage railways have tended to keep their fares low at a time of hugely increased cost to the point where operating trains can be unprofitable. Gift Aid is one way of addressing that but the question then is if that benefit wasn't there what would a realistic fare need to be?

 

There are consistent rumours that NYMR are moving away from this model for future years, with the suggestion being that the benefits of Gift Aid are being offset by a combination of lost revenue on repeat and the deterrent effect of "high" fares. I'm curious as to both the truth of those rumours, and the net effect that Gift Aid has delivered to NYMR.

 

I suggested previously that the net financial benefit is in excess of £450k per year which is an awful lot of extra tickets to sell if the benefit of Gift Aid recovery is lost! As Steve pointed earlier the free return in twelve months option is one of two alternative Gift Aid mechanisms. Both have been tried on the NYMR. Aside from Gift Aid an approach that appears to be gaining credibility in the sector is operating only those services likely to generate a surplus rather than trying to fill what may be a lot of mobile fresh air. The level of fares is another matter but must surely take account of the travel distance on offer and its direct realtionship with operating and infrastructure costs. It's bound to be an unpopular view but I suspect that heritage railway fares are generally too low rather than too high. The trend might be to carry fewer passengers on fewer services but at considerably higher fares with greater margins?

 

Thank you - it's good to see this quantified and, being a net figure, puts some proportion on the "we're giving away too many seats" claims.

I tend to agree with both your suggestion that fares are too low, and @Sidmouth's observation that raising them to a fully economic level would have have much wider implications - already visible in the railtour market.

 

I think the headlong rush towards "lower volumes, higher fares" is profoundly misguided, and in years to come those proposing it will be seen to have hastened the demise of the very railways they wish to see preserved.

It carries with it three very real flaws.

Firstly, it reduces the base over which the fixed cost of the railway is spread. Yes, to a degree, running fewer services reduces the fixed cost (fewer operational locos and carriages needed) but the infrastructure doesn't go away. Most preserved railways have quite large estates of heritage buildings and structures which are expensive to maintain and don't get any cheaper just because they spend half the year closed. Cut the passenger numbers and it inevitably means each passenger has to cover a bigger part of that fixed cost.

Secondly, cutting the number of duties reduces the opportunities to train the next generation of operating staff. We are seeing that to a degree on the Bluebell, where the small / medium loco turns are mostly now confined to the premium dining services. Because those are typically one trip or one-and-a-half trip jobs, cleaners rarely get to fire the smaller engines: a consequence is that we have seen many instances of cleaners struggling in firing assessments because they haven't had enough experience on small locos. But if you can't get enough volunteer crew trained, the premium services still have to run (the punters have, after all, paid a premium price) and from that point on, you are on a slippery slope to paid loco crew, since they can be guaranteed to get sufficient duties. At which point, your cost base goes up again. Essentially, I think it is inevitable that a railway that try to go down a premium-only model will fairly soon end up at a Paignton & Dartmouth model - but without necessarily being situated in a tourist hotspot.

Thirdly, I think it is a mistake in business to wilfully confine yourself to a single market - e.g. the well-heeled - since you become vulnerable to cyclical economic changes. I am not saying railways should turn their back on premium products, just that they shouldn't become the only - or dominant - product.

Many railways have been losing traffic over a period of many years. But I think it is the easy way out to say "if we have fewer passengers, let's charge them more" rather than asking the difficult question: "why don't people want to visit us?" If your round trip takes two hours, what are you doing to make people feel you are an all-day attraction? Because if you are only perceived as a half-day attraction, you sure as heck can't get away with charging a whole-day price. And if you are already losing passengers at a given fare point, how can you expect to raise prices in isolation without losing even more passengers? So you have to look at your whole offering.

Edit to add: Mainline market is different, and in particular the first two reasons don't apply there. So I think a "premium only" model may be valid for mainline operators, but would be foolish for heritage railways.

Tom

 

Lower passenger volumes also mean less 'secondary spend' in the shop/cafe which is often the only profitable part of the operation.
Ray.

 

Reading the above, I'm conscious of parallels elsewhere.

As many will be aware, my son is a choral singer, currently at university and a choral scholar at the cathedral there.

For a variety of reasons, the church choral tradition has been moving away from parishes and consolidating at cathedrals and a small number of universities and colleges (especially Oxbridge). The cathedrals are supported by linked schools, mostly fee paying but with significant bursary schemes. Otherwise, the major feeder channel is from a number of public schools. He is the only state educated choral scholar (from 6) where he sings; on the (excellent) Rodolfus Choral Courses he attended as a 6th former, he found himself surrounded by Etonians, Wykehamists and students at other more minor establishments - but virtually none of them state educated.

Excellent work is being done to broaden that base, in parishes and through outreach schemes (I seem to recall reading of one of @Jamessquared's offspring participating in one such). But it's an uphill struggle, because the pyramid has a very narrow base and the mesh is very wide (my son found his way into singing because we happen to attend one of those parish churches).

There are obvious parallels to heritage railways, and the risk of retrenchment is real.