Case Studies

NATIONAL EXPRESS COACHES: SELF SERVICE COACH TICKETING

The Company

The state owned National Bus Company de-nationalised and floated on the London Exchange in 1992 as the National Express Group. Its activities include rail, local buses and intercity coaches. It operates primarily in the UK, Spain and USA. It retains the largest share of the UK coach market and is the only company that operates coaches throughout the UK.

Background

National Express (NX) sold its coach tickets either from its NX-owned travel shops or via 3^rd party agents to whom it paid commission. It needed to find a way to reduce the cost of these sales outlets.

The Solution

The Hub’s multi-channel approach to problem solving produced a three-pronged replacement of the existing system. Creation of a web based journey planning ticket ordering and payment process allows travellers to now buy their tickets on the web or by a self-service kiosk: and they can choose to identify their ticket to the coach driver either with a hard copy ticket or by an SMS text message on their mobile phone. Self-service kiosks stationed all over the country are centrally managed monitored and supported by The Hub’s remote management application system. More recently the Hub application is being considered to activate on board ticketing utilising web services and contactless payment terminals managed through on board wireless connectivity.

The Result

NX continues to operate ticket sales through 3^rd party agents, but has largely replaced its staffed travel shops with web and kiosk. Kiosk sales alone account for 5% of all its coach ticket sales and it estimated that 20% of all tickets are confirmed via mobile ticketing also remotely managed by The Hub platform.