Trainline(.)com

Sometimes, the platform of the national train company’s website such as MAV or Renfe or even SNCF, is difficult for customers to purchase the ticket online in a time-efficient way. Time is money. And if the ticket purchase can not be executed in an acceptable amount of time, then some customers prefer to get the job done quickly and have confidence that Trainline or Omio or a similar reputable site can do that for them. Moreover, for train trips covering several countries, it’s much quicker to open, say, the Trainline App where a customer only needs to register one time in order to buy the train tickets of several train operators. This way, all train tix can be found in one App, instead of several Apps.
And using a single App saves time because customers can purchase and save tix all in one place, rather than have them scattered over several national train company Apps.
Some people are willing to spend more on accommodations. Some are willing to spend more for private car transfers. Some spend more on airport taxis rather than using public transit. Some foodies splash out on dining. And some, are willing to spend a bit more for their transportation costs when they find a way to do it that is time-efficient, user-friendly and consistent.

The Trainline(.)com interface is easy. Easier than a few of the national sites i have visited.

And if you are of an age where using the internet is more difficult, then maybe it's worth paying 50 euro for a 25 euro train ride or dealing with not knowing if you are in the Standard carriage or the El Cheapo carriage on the RegioJet train. Its a short ride, and you will live.

Or one could post on the RS forum and ask for help ... seen that from time to time. But thats time ...

"I understand that the UK might be a special circumstance for using them and maybe if you are buying a lot of tickets on different carriers and and you want them all on one app, then the convenience might make sense. "

Actually the UK is one country where I definitely would not recommend Trainline. Why pay a premium for no reason? Tickets are easy to book, and you can book for routes run by different operating companies on any train operators app, so there's really no advantage using Trainline. I really don't understand why people seem happy to pay commission for something that's really so simple.

I have no experience with buying UK train tickets on Trainline. I would not endorse it in a situation for anglophones. . Trainline makes most of its revenue from advertising on its site. The mark-up on tix is usually between 3-5%. In some cases posters report there was no mark-up on the tickets they bought.

Mr. E, Where have you ever seen a mark-up of 100%?
That does not seem credible and appears to be a canard.

The UK trainline is not the same as the European trainline. UK trainline bought Capitaine Train, and rebranded it. And yes, they are sometimes a good place to buy tickets. Especially from France to neighbouring countries. (You can buy a Nice - Milano ticket there for example...)

That they do not show MAV on Budapest - Vienna is understandable. There are only two trainservices on that route. There is the Regiojet, and then there are the EC and RJ services operated jointly by OBB and MAV. Trainline obviously found it sufficient to just connect to OBB For this route.

First off, I think we can probably all agree that trainline is a vast improvement over sites
like Rail Europe and others that charge a huge markup, or, charge a premium for making
tentative reservations for trains that don't exist yet.

From a technology standpoint, I think trainline is a bit of a marvel, as they had to implement
access using API's that are probably different (and change) for each different country &
company's rail website/database. Keep track of exchange rates and do conversions into
customer currencies. Handle back-office payments back to the rail companies in their
native currency. Handle ticketing and tracking/record keeping for customer reservations.
Not revolutionary technology, but a lot of gory detail that constantly changes.

It's also possible that some of those API's don't allow access to some fares or classes of
service or sales that the national rail companies have. It's not like SNCF or Renfe are
easy to use as a customer. I can only imagine how clunky their database and website
implementations might be.

People responding to this thread (well, maybe other than me) are sophisticated users of
travel websites, etc. But most of the people trying to make plans aren't (just look at the
level of some of the questions people ask).

So to me, as always, it's caveat emptor, and more you know, the better off you are to
figure out the best way to make your plans.

Trainline does not make most of their revenue from advertising, at least in the UK.
They also make it from the internal commission on ticket sales. That is to say the price of a rail ticket is split between the company or companies it is valid on, plus a percentage to the selling company. So if you buy a ticket from say LNER for an Avanti journey a small percentage of the price goes to LNER as the seller.
None of that is really important so long as the commission remains within the rail industry.
In the UK they do actually work for several train companies as their back office. So you can either buy from Trainline through the train company at face value, or pay extra to book direct with them.
With trainline it is going to an American Private Equity company, who have several controversies to their name, which can readily be looked up. While ethically I wouldn't deal with them under any circumstances the simple fact that they are abstracting money from the rail industry across Europe is a huge turn off.
If it is true that they don't give MAV fares (maybe because MAV don't pay commission) then one of trainlines selling points of being a fair comparator goes out of the window.

Trainline saved us quite a bit of money using a “split ticket” for a UK trip. (Llandudno to London).. Yes, I know this is possible on some train company sites, but not so easily done if you’re not already very experienced with the nuances of booking UK travel. The ease and transparency of Trainline for this was well worth whatever their commission was.

All i care about is getting the best price for the product I am buying and having a source or sources that provide what I would trust to be the most accurate information. For that the national sites win. Below is sort of a fringe example because it involves a country not fully served by trainline. But which are and which are not. Not like Trainline tells you. Its hit and miss and if I have to go to all the other sites anyway, and the prices are the same or better, then I see no reason to use a third party. In this case, below, trainline will get expensive. I couldn’t get Trainline(.)com to show any tickets for Budapest to Ljubljana or to Bucharest or any trips within Hungary. When they did show anything the showed busses which might make some believe there is no train service.

I dont think Trainline does the Czech Rail trains either. I might have missed somehting but didnt look like they were there.

Kenko, I mentioned at the top of the post that for those thinking all their tickets in one app was more important than cost, Trainline(.)com might be the way to go. But since you brought it up, I thought some more and, with cost not being important in most cases one national train company app will cover a trip that entails three countries. I suspect that most of the RS folks here would fall into that category. If there is a fourth, fifth and sixth county, well, that might still only be two apps. Again, not earth shattering. So that’s really a marginal reason. But okay, for some maybe so.

Markups? Where did i discuss markups? Only that with Trainline(.)com you might not be getting the best price because they don’t sell tickets from all the national companies. And I dont know which they do and which they dont.

Here is a trip involving three countries. Austria, Hungary, Slovakia

9 July morning train Vienna Hfb to Budapest Keleti all trains between 8am and 11am.
Trainline: all times 52.30 euro (and even though I searched to Budapest Keleti, Trainline(.)com tried to sell me a ticket to Budapest Deli. Somewhat misleading if not dishonest.
MAV: 2 at 21euro and one at 23 euro.
NEXT LEG
Budapest to Kosice between 8am and 11am
Trainline: all times 43.40 euro
MAV: all times 18:00 euro

Total Trainline price for two = 191.40 euro
Total MAV price for two = 78 euro
Everything on one App.

Like any 3rd party seller, it might work well until there is a problem. In my experience, Trainline's customer service is terrible. I've rarely used anything but national rail sites. I do recall years ago I used something like loco2 in Spain when I had issues with RENFE. I did like them and they seemed to always have the same prices as RENFE. Alas, they merged with Trainline, I believe. I agree that folks should avoid RAIL Europe. I think a lot of folks new to travel end up there because of the name.

I haven't tried to purchase ticket's on SNCF's website for quite a while. I did try once about 4 years ago and no matter what I did, it wouldn't take any of my credit cards. So I purchased a high speed ticket from Paris to Bordeaux on Trainline. Then countries closed their borders due to COVID. I tried to get a refund from SNCF and they said I needed to work with Trainline since I purchased from them. Trainline refused to refund and said I needed to work with SNCF, and back and forth until I gave up. So, for me personally, I will not use Trainline.

On a trip recently, that included part of France, I was easily able to purchase tickets at the train stations. None of my routes were on high speed trains.

I think when people suggest using Trainline, it'd be nice to also state that it is a 3rd party seller.

Thank you Mr. E for your research.

jules m, I know what your problem was dealing with the French. I just read some data on English proficiency. France ranked below Ukraine, Albania, Suriname and Bolivia. But that’s not fair. So just looking at Paris it ranked just above Tegucigalpa, Minsk, oh and Madrid and Rome; but below Sofia, Tallinn, Zagreb, Vilnius, Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest (do you see a trend here?).