Online Seat Reservation System

[hkstudent]

Till now, seat reservation can only be done at ticket office or online when purchasing tickets.
However, given that many people still buy tickets through TVM and not all ticket offices open the whole day, it proves difficult for people to reserve a seat.
Do you think whether it would be possible for TOCs to set up online seat reservation system, and requires validation by providing ticket details? Currently, JR East has such system, and reservation coupon can be collected at travel centre after the seat reservation is completed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Some TVMs e.g. those operated by Northern and LNER can do seat reservations. However as you say there is typically no way other than a staffed ticket office to get one if you already have a ticket (though you have niche options like XC's Ten Minute Reservations and some TOCs will do normal ones via Twitter). I agree this could do with being changed.

 

[hkstudent]

Some TVMs e.g. those operated by Northern and LNER can do seat reservations. However as you say there is typically no way other than a staffed ticket office to get one if you already have a ticket (though you have niche options like XC's Ten Minute Reservations and some TOCs will do normal ones via Twitter). I agree this could do with being changed.

indeed, I just got a seat reservation from XC's call centre.
Getting online seat reservation system actually does cut staff demand for seat reservation, which means cost saving.

 

[takno]

These are becoming slowly more common across Europe, although they are usually in countries where a reservation incurs a charge. Germany, Austria (inasmuch as their terrible website can do anything), Denmark and a few others certainly do it as part of their normal systems. Obviously the charge element is felt to remove the need to validate against tickets.

Sweden will issue reservations against interrail passes, but in addition to the fee they validate the number of the rail pass. In practice I suspect this led to them only looking at the reservation and not checking the box had been filled in on the pass, so it might be actively bad for revenue!