Replacing Seatfrog with changes to RARS

[crablab]

Having developed the market for "in-flight upgrades" and marginal revenue from selling seats that would otherwise be unfilled, I'm confused why the industry continues to seek individual agreements with Seatfrog. Building the same functionality into RARS (Rail Availability & Reservation Service) and making it available via all accredited retailers would seem to be to everyone's advantage (except Seatfrog).

Seatfrog's continued (presumably profitable) existence is rather an indictment of the current industry fragmentation and demonstrative of a lack of co-ordinated cross-industry effort.

Not only does this mean passengers are left paying substantial fees to Seatfrog, but retailers are prevented from offering the same products through their channels and developing their own innovations in this area.

I understand the issue with industry inertia etc. but are there any particularly difficult technical constraints which would prevent S3 Passenger offering similar functionality? (Assuming Squills could be prevailed upon to build it!)

 

[Jan Mayen]

Can ask what does RARS mean and/or do?
And who or what is Squills?
Please forgive my ignorance!

 

[OscarH]

Assuming Squills could be prevailed upon to build it!

Would depend on charging an absolute fortune and it including a way to increase vendor lock-in

 

[Adam Williams]

I would much rather something else existed to allow participants to "bid" on unused capacity in auctions than shoehorning it into the reservations system (which in an ideal world would be doing nothing more than allowing seats to be booked, with Advance availability and quota management handled elsewhere - perhaps the core "booking seats" functionality would work better if that was the focus). Particularly given the fees that are charged for interacting with RARS!

But the underlying point is an entirely valid one which independent retailers have pointed out before; these products should be available to all participants to sell. Only offering them via restricted channels that only people "in the know" will be aware of is anything but simple for passengers and leads to a confusing customer proposition.

 

[Alfonso]

Personally im not a big fan of seatfrog but I can see the business case for it...Many industries have ways of quietly selling stuff cheaper without damaging their "mainline" offer. Its supposed to be a bit fiddly, so that only your most price sensitive customers bother with it, while your regular customers keep paying you your normal prices. Seatfrog is in a way a bit like Groupon, Wowcher etc. If it was integrated into RARS (which i assume is the main rail industry ticketing system) then it might be more appealing to business travellers on expenses etc, and the rail industry wants to sell an upgrade to someone who would otherwise be sitting in standard, and earn a bit more money from it, it does not want to sell a first class seat at a discount to someone who was prepared to pay full fare for it.

 

[Adam Williams]

which i assume is the main rail industry ticketing system

It's not a ticketing system, it's a reservation system.

Retailers do ticketing themselves, and the financial settlement is handled by a system called LENNON.

It is entirely possible to continue to retail many types of tickets whilst the reservation system has fallen/is falling over (which has happened with what is, to me, alarming regularity recently).

 

[crablab]

But the underlying point is an entirely valid one which independent retailers have pointed out before; these products should be available to all participants to sell. Only offering them via restricted channels that only people "in the know" will be aware of is anything but simple for passengers and leads to a confusing customer proposition.

I wholeheartedly agree. Whilst I can appreciate Seatfrog being an initial "MVP" of sorts to prove the value here, it's regrettable that accredited retailers are locked out of this market entirely. There's significant opportunity for further innovation - for example, proactively offering upsell based on booked train busyness indicators - which retailers would be well placed to offer.
At the very least, not allowing all retailers to participate equally deprives some of the opportunity to compete for this revenue & erodes their value proposition to customers.

I would much rather something else existed to allow participants to "bid" on unused capacity in auctions than shoehorning it into the reservations system

Fair enough; I suggested RARS since (to my understanding) availability and pricing for auctions is primarily based on unreserved capacity; something RARS is supposed to know!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 31 May 2026 ==

the rail industry wants to sell an upgrade to someone who would otherwise be sitting in standard, and earn a bit more money from it, it does not want to sell a first class seat at a discount to someone who was prepared to pay full fare for it.

The way auctions are timed and the inherent jeopardy in whether you win or not protects against that, I think. Seatfrog already offers a "buy it now" option in the auction flow for those who are prepared to pay for the certainty of an upgrade .

Making these more visible is more likely to grow the auction market for the latent seats, pushing up the hammer price, rather than erode existing revenue.

 

[Failed Unit]

I hate seatfrog but sadly it is a necessary evil. As we are able to expense the upgrade upto a certain value (which can be greater if we had just bought the ticket)

Or travel policy is “business class on journeys above 4 hours”. If any retailer could sell me a first class ticket, with business class on it with this king of approach I would be very happy.

 

[dmncf]

But the underlying point is an entirely valid one which independent retailers have pointed out before; these products should be available to all participants to sell. Only offering them via restricted channels that only people "in the know" will be aware of is anything but simple for passengers and leads to a confusing customer proposition.

There's no way that one could explain Great Britain's rail ticketing system without Seatfrog sounding like an excessive complication. If the government is serious about simplifying rail ticketing, then Seatfrog must cease.

 

[Haywain]

If the government is serious about simplifying rail ticketing, then Seatfrog must cease.

In what way would ticketing be simplified by removing Seatfrog?

 

[Adam Williams]

I hate seatfrog but sadly it is a necessary evil. As we are able to expense the upgrade upto a certain value (which can be greater if we had just bought the ticket)

Or travel policy is “business class on journeys above 4 hours”. If any retailer could sell me a first class ticket, with business class on it with this king of approach I would be very happy.

So if the retailer broke it down into:

• Standard class price
• "Upgrade cost" (First class - equivalent Standard class for selected outward/return journey)

on a nice PDF receipt...

That would be enough?

 

[dmncf]

In what way would ticketing be simplified by removing Seatfrog?

Because in GB we have a myriad of train operators plus a myriad of ticket retailers, but one saving grace is that (with a few exceptions) the ticket retailers sell the same range of tickets at the same prices. Seatfrog is one of the exceptions. If a customer wants to buy an upgrade from standard to first class, it would be simpler if they could buy this from the ticket retailer they used to buy their standard class ticket. I think such upgrades would be easier to promote (e.g. notifications from the ticket retailer) and more customers would buy them, if they could be sold by the ticket retailer that the customer used to purchase their standard class ticket.

 

[Haywain]

it would be simpler if they could buy this from the ticket retailer they used to buy their standard class ticket.

I struggle to see how the Seatfrog type of upgrade system could be co-ordinated across multiple retailers.

 

[Adam Williams]

I struggle to see how the Seatfrog type of upgrade system could be co-ordinated across multiple retailers.

It is technically feasible to do. Clearly the likes of eBay exist and co-ordinate auctions with many more individual bidders than the likes of SeatFrog would ever facilitate. If the pipework is there, people will connect up to it.

I don't think anyone is advocating for full decentralisation here; in the same way as there is a service we use that holds the canonical record that seat A4 is booked by retailer Raileasy on service VT786700 next week.

 

[Failed Unit]

So if the retailer broke it down into:

• Standard class price
• "Upgrade cost" (First class - equivalent Standard class for selected outward/return journey)

on a nice PDF receipt...

That would be enough?

The option to upgrade on a different credit card would be the icing on the cake. On short journeys link London - Leeds I would need to pay the upgrade myself, which I would be happy to do if it was only £15 (which it often can be). I really object to the £3 platform fee when they don’t offer anything for it. During disruption you are on your own with seat frog, if you miss your connection you need to take that up with operator that caused the delay.

 

[crablab]

If the pipework is there, people will connect up to it.

Which I understand is RDG's reason to exist

 

[Bletchleyite]

In what way would ticketing be simplified by removing Seatfrog?

Seatfrog causes something not to be sold by all retail channels. It is the ideal that all retail channels sell the same set of products.

 

[Adam Williams]

I would also add that the SeatFrog models are far from the only effective ways in which spare capacity can be sold off, and probably only really scratch the surface.

Research from Jacobs has shown that there's £500 million of potential revenue being left on the table because of a failure to modernise the way in which inventory availability is distributed to retailers. Changes in that area would unlock far more innovative ways of optimising revenue than these small scale trials have achieved - with the added bonus of it being available via all sales channels.