There's yield management

And there's WTF 🤯 yield management

Morning of Friday 5th June I need to go to either Bruxelles or Maastricht (I don't know which yet). If Maastricht I will change in Liège

Tickets then...

Paris - Bruxelles, Eurostar
€95 single, standard class

Paris - Liège, Eurostar
*SAME TRAIN, and FURTHER THAN BRUXELLES*
€39 single, standard class

#CrossBorderRail

@jon my understanding is that the idea is to save some seats for Liège, which only sees 1tp2h vs 2tph to Brussels. the Brussels passengers can just take a different train

that doesn't particularly explain why the non-liège trains are also expensive, though

@bovine3dom I see the idea, OK. But this much discrepancy? Simply shows they run too few Bruxelles-Paris!
@jon come on, this is the SNCF, they will do everything on the planet _except_ run more trains 😅
@bovine3dom Crush em. Competition. Next.

@jon well, exactly. but then they cry about competitors stealing their "vache à lait"

no shit they're going to compete on the lines where you're overcharging and undersupplying

that's capitalism doing what it's supposed to do

@bovine3dom Or if you want to maintain your monopoly that you have because you're a state owned firm, well, damned well behave in a way suitable for a state owned firm!
Yield management à la SNCF has become a semantic over years: it's now closer to shortage management.

@bovine3dom @jon But incidentally the Bruxelles-only train is the more expensive one 🤔 Not much of a nudge, is it?

(Of course that's not rigorous A/B testing, perhaps baseline demand is way higher on the 07:23 train and 109€ is a relative bargain. Although that's only an half-hour gap.)