Trenitalia launches internet ticket distribution: Trenitalia has developed a new internet-based ticket distribution system called Railbest in order to increase its sales abroad

International Railway Journal, Feb, 2005 by Ugo Dell Arciprete

EUROPEAN railways have traditionally dedicated their main efforts to selling their tickets and passes within their national territory either at station ticket windows or through travel agencies. Throughout Europe, any railway is able to sell the products of all other railways on the basis of general agreements, such as the TCV (Tarif Commun Voyageurs) or through bilateral agreements.

On the contrary, the situation overseas is not one of reciprocity: most European railway tickets are sold under the joint commercial name of Eurail, but only a few distributors are allowed to actually sell tickets under a Eurail licence. Moreover, very few railways have developed a system of their own in order to sell their point-to-point tickets independently from the Eurail domain.

A few years ago, Trenitalia decided to develop such a system. The objective was to sell Italian tickets and passes directly through local travel agents by means of an inexpensive connection to reduce distribution costs dramatically. The only way to do this was, of course, by using the internet as a transmission tool and by using low-cost, non-dedicated hardware. On this basis, Trenitalia launched a project under the name of Railbest, which stands for Rail Booking, Enquiry and Sales Tool. Railbest is now a trade mark registered worldwide.

Figure 1 shows the overall architecture of the system. Railbest has two kinds of users: professional and passengers. They access the same central application, by means of two different internet interfaces, more complete and complex for professionals, easier and friendly for the general public.

Passengers can access Railbest through the Trenitalia portal (www.trenitalia.com), to purchase point-to-point tickets on cross-border services linking Italy with neighbouring countries. It is also possible to buy the main railway passes on sale in Italy: InterRail, EuroDomino, Trenitalia Pass, and Greece'n Italy Pass. The passenger pays by credit card and can choose either to receive the ticket at home by express mail, or to retrieve it at any of the main railway stations in Italy.

Professional users (travel agents, tour operators, railway sales staff) have of course a more structured relationship with Railbest. Any such user must sign a contract with Trenitalia, giving them the right to receive a user-ID and password, and a stock of blank tickets. Once a contract has been signed, only a PC with a standard commercial printer (ink jet or laser), and a suitable internet access (ADSL is recommended for performance purposes) are needed.

Once the agent reaches the Railbest website (www.railbest.com) and enters his ID and password, he is faced by the main menu page where he can select the product he wants to sell, according to the request of his customer. The lower part of the screen gives access to complementary tools and settings.

The agent can define exactly the product he is looking for with a few mouse clicks on no more than a couple of pages. In the case of a ticket, for example, he needs to select the origin and destination, the date, the train, the number of passengers, and the class of travel, whereas for an InterRail card he must select the zones, the duration, the age range, and so on.

For so-called static products such as passes or open tickets without reservation, when on-line access to a reservation system is therefore not needed, Railbest sends back the printing commands to the agent's PC, a blank coupon is inserted in the printer, and the ticket is issued.

If, on the contrary, a reservation is needed, Railbest connects itself to the reservation system hosting the requested train. The connection can be either direct, which is the case for the Italian system, or through the Hermes network for all other systems available. Once the reservation data are received, the printing process follows the same path.

A positive return code from the printer to the PC is an acknowledgment that the ticket has been correctly printed, and allows Railbest to record this transaction with the others already made by the same agent. The corresponding price is added to the agent's account and, at the end of each month, Trenitalia invoices the total amount of sales, minus the commission, to the agent. At any time, the agent can display full details of all sales made during a defined period.

The system will issue statistical data, used for marketing analysis, and accounting files used by Trenitalia in order to allocate revenue to other railways for their share of the international products sold.

Internal Check

Railbest has a form of internal check which prevents the user from issuing tickets incorrectly. For example, the moment an InterRail youth card is selected, the first-class option becomes unavailable. In the case of a train ticket, the system displays only the commercial offers and services available on that particular train, initially in a deactivated state. Inputting the number of passengers activates the choice of the age range. Choosing the latter activates only the corresponding commercial offers. Choosing the offer activates only the available services (Figure 2).