VT ROLLS OUT M-TICKETS TO ALL TICKET TYPES AND ROUTES
Published at 08:30 on Wednesday 24th February 2016
Tags: Virgin Trains, m-Ticket, mobile ticketing
A Pendolino passes a London Midland Class 350 at Old Linslade on the West Coast Main Line. Ken Brunt
Virgin Trains has announced that it will make m-Tickets available to Virgin customers travelling on all routes along the East and West Coast Main Lines.
The company is the first franchised rail operator to offer m-Tickets for all ticket types and across all routes in this major step towards eliminating the paper ticket completely. The bar-coded m-Tickets which customers download to their smartphones or other mobile devices will be offered for journeys on Virgin Trains services purchased through the Virgin Trains (East Coast) website or the Virgin Trains app from early April.
The app means that customers can both buy and use their tickets on their mobile for maximum convenience. It also means that customers wanting to buy their tickets on the day can download the app via the free Virgin Trains station Wi-Fi, avoid queues, and select their ticket via a simpler interface than ticket machines.
This follows on from Virgin Trains’ participation in the industry pilot scheme looking at making buying and using train tickets simple. As part of this pilot we have been able to increase our overall mobile ticket sales to over 170,000 since July 2015, from less than half that amount.
Both companies are looking at ways to bring m-Tickets to even more customers and move away from paper tickets completely, which are easily lost or confused with tickets for other journeys.
