Page 41 - Vía Libre Special - 25 Years of Spanish High Speed Rail

Series 112 train on the Madrid-Valencia line.

In terms of organization, the result was trains (Class 102, 104, 120.050, 130 and 730) and reduced
a radical change to the organizational model. by half the cafeteria queues by identifying bottlenecks
We moved from a product-based organization and a repairs campaign of the utilities (ovens, coffee
(Commercial Services vs. Public Service Obligations) machine, etc.) to minimize unavailability.
to an organization based on geographic markets, in In order to know our customers better and
which each market manages all the products within increase their attachment to our services, we have
its territory. Also, the new organization integrates improved and upgraded our loyalty scheme and
train management with the sales system which was reduced the number of points needed to get a free
previously managed by another department. ticket. And to increase travel options we have created
In the commercial area we also introduced integrated tickets for different trains at a lower price
some very significant changes. We created new than if bought separately, and combined suburban
products (AV City and Intercity) with a lower level network (CS) tickets so that with any ticket from the
of service and therefore lower prices. We eliminated commercial service passengers have the right to a
the highest level class (Club) and replaced it with a free ticket on our CS to the station of departure and
class with more spacious seats but no hospitality from the station of arrival. Finally, we have created
(Tourist Plus). We also created a new system of ‘synergised’ trains whereby seats for different
dual prices, with reference prices for each route Commercial and/or Public Service Obligation services
and commercial class, and dynamic prices based can be bought on a single train, thus increasing the
on revenue management with greater commercial efficiency of the system.
restrictions (charge for changes, cancellations, etc.) The change in results of passenger and
and, most importantly, we dropped the prices of revenue trends was immediate, from February 13, 2013,
Tourist Class by 11%. We also introduced fares that when the new policy was put in place. In two years
lowered the cost of travelling by train for certain AVE+LD traffic grew by 32.7% and the revenue by
market segments (ten journey tickets at a price 35% 9.03%. Since November 2014 the train has overtaken
below the reference price, the Youth Card with a 30% air travel (rolling year) and has regained the lead in
discount for those under 26, the Table Fare with a long distance public transport that it lost 24 years
discount of up to 60% when you buy the 4 tickets ago. The growth of rail travel was so strong that in
that go with a table). 2014 the overall market grew despite the fact that the
To improve customer experience on trains crisis was not yet over. The cost per seat-kilometre
we created new services such as mobile bars, quiet dropped by 9% and train occupancy grew from 58.9
coaches, and a door-to-door baggage service. To make % to 63.38%.
the customer experience before and after the journey
more amenable we improved our website, created Operations
a ticket sales and information app, and set up last Management - Copérnico
minute desks specializing in selling tickets and making years of Spanish high speed rail
changes for trains whose departure is imminent. In In 2012 we started a process to improve and
the trains we invested €2.6 M to put sockets on 68 HS deploy Copérnico. This is an application whose first

Vía Libre • Special 25th Anniversary of the AVE Edition 41