On 31/03/2012 12:37, Bruce wrote:
wrote:

On 30/03/2012 14:31, d wrote:
The real blackmail is in the holiday companies and airlines stiffing people
with exhorbitant fares during school holidays. There's no reason for them to
do it , they just do it because they can. Its naked profiteering.


Isn't it just a case of them offering lower fares during quieter periods.

Are railways profiteering by charging more during peak periods?


Almost certainly, yes. The prime example is Virgin Trains' peak
services into Euston which are far from rammed full. Virgin has
chosen to charge very high unrestricted fares in order to extract a
huge income from these services even though they are far from full.
Lower unrestricted fares would mean more passengers would travel,
filling up the trains, but at a lower overall income to Virgin, which
is why they prefer the stinging, ultra-high fares.

In the USA, which we in the UK often regard as the home of unfettered
capitalism and a mostly unregulated free market, such practices as
Virgin Trains routinely operates would be regarded as evidence of
illegal profiteering and punished severely.

This would be the USA where intercity rail services are provided by a
nationalised company?

Are there any 'commercial' intercity passenger rail services in the USA?
Even local transport is often publicly owned - apparently having Veolia
contracted to run the trams in New Orleans is seen as cutting edge
stuff, rather than just how public transport is provided.


--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

In message , at 12:37:12 on
Sat, 31 Mar 2012, Bruce remarked:
Isn't it just a case of them offering lower fares during quieter periods.

Are railways profiteering by charging more during peak periods?

Almost certainly, yes. The prime example is Virgin Trains' peak
services into Euston which are far from rammed full. Virgin has
chosen to charge very high unrestricted fares in order to extract a
huge income from these services even though they are far from full.
Lower unrestricted fares would mean more passengers would travel,
filling up the trains, but at a lower overall income to Virgin, which
is why they prefer the stinging, ultra-high fares.

It shows that yield management is more difficult with train tickets than
holidays. The (rail) consumers are more savvy and have a better grip of
how to game the system - which includes travelling half an hour later.

You can often get a cheaper holiday by travelling a month later, but
somehow that doesn't appeal to people with fixed vacation dates. And you
can often get a much cheaper room by "splitting the tickets" into flight
and hotel, then wandering around when you get there trying to find a
hotel with spare rooms.

The worst time I had with that strategy was once in Las Vegas when it
took me about 3hrs to find a hotel the first night (I had a hire car to
get around) then had to change hotels twice later in the week. Some
people will pay not to have that kind of excitement! (But if you are
going to gamble on a room, why not at Las Vegas...)

Of course, nowadays, you'd have problems at immigration not knowing
where you were going to stay the first night, but that's another story.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at
12:57:36 on Sat, 31 Mar 2012, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
This is a typical bit of Usenet nonsense, where people are too inclined
to rubbish the efforts of other professionals, while claiming their own
activities are a tour de force that's beyond reproach from mere
amateurs.

As in the Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark by amateurs?

I wonder how many marketing/PR people have more than a GCSE in maths?

Thanks for digging a bit more of this hole, and jumping in!
--
Roland Perry

On 31/03/2012 15:42, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
12:57:36 on Sat, 31 Mar 2012, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
This is a typical bit of Usenet nonsense, where people are too inclined
to rubbish the efforts of other professionals, while claiming their own
activities are a tour de force that's beyond reproach from mere
amateurs.

As in the Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark by amateurs?

I wonder how many marketing/PR people have more than a GCSE in maths?

Thanks for digging a bit more of this hole, and jumping in!

Hmm. Are we building up to you saying that there is a conspiracy by Big
Maths and people with specific sector knowledge to suppress the secret
truths unveiled by PR surveys, a bit like the way people with medical
qualifications conspire against homoeopathy?

If something is important (so not Usenet!), I prefer my information to
come from informed and knowledgeable people with some idea of what they
are doing. Based on long experience I don't trust PR-driven "research".

A while ago I saw some PR research supposedly based on passengers at
Liverpool Street station, complete with pictures of the survey in
process. It didn't say whether the sample was biased by all the
trainspotters who would no doubt have turned out to see the very unusual
Gatwick Express class 460 move visible in the background.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

In message , at
16:32:57 on Sat, 31 Mar 2012, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
This is a typical bit of Usenet nonsense, where people are too inclined
to rubbish the efforts of other professionals, while claiming their own
activities are a tour de force that's beyond reproach from mere
amateurs.

As in the Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark by amateurs?

I wonder how many marketing/PR people have more than a GCSE in maths?

Thanks for digging a bit more of this hole, and jumping in!

Hmm. Are we building up to you saying that there is a conspiracy by Big
Maths and people with specific sector knowledge to suppress the secret
truths unveiled by PR surveys, a bit like the way people with medical
qualifications conspire against homoeopathy?

No conspiracy, but you meeting a few clueless marketing/PR/
Market_Research people doesn't mean they are all like that.
--
Roland Perry

On 31/03/2012 18:01, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
16:32:57 on Sat, 31 Mar 2012, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
This is a typical bit of Usenet nonsense, where people are too
inclined
to rubbish the efforts of other professionals, while claiming their
own
activities are a tour de force that's beyond reproach from mere
amateurs.

As in the Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark by amateurs?

I wonder how many marketing/PR people have more than a GCSE in maths?

Thanks for digging a bit more of this hole, and jumping in!

Hmm. Are we building up to you saying that there is a conspiracy by
Big Maths and people with specific sector knowledge to suppress the
secret truths unveiled by PR surveys, a bit like the way people with
medical qualifications conspire against homoeopathy?

No conspiracy, but you meeting a few clueless marketing/PR/
Market_Research people doesn't mean they are all like that.

I'm sure plenty of cavemen assumed that the next sabre-toothed tiger
they would encounter would just want to be their friend. We are probably
not descendants of such cavemen.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

In message , Graham Nye
writes
The 22% figure relates to over-65s. I doubt there are 68 million
pensioners in the UK. I might believe that a fifth of pensioners
can afford a foreign holiday but the idea that a fifth of them
across the nation will flee the country to avoid the olympics
seems ... unexpected. (For most of the country avoiding the games
is just a case of avoiding TV and press coverage.)
I'm an OAP and live in West Cumbria, so I'll only be affected it the
excess Londoners decide to come to the Lake district. (I hope they
don't, it gets congested enough up here in the summer anyway.)
--
Clive

On Mar 30, 9:50*am, wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:54:00 +0100

Jim Chisholm wrote:
Actually many people take two weeks off at that time of the year. Rail
traffic drops so much on some lines that they remove some peak hour
restrictions.
It is called holidays...

So the whole of london is going to go away on holiday in the same 2 weeks
as the Olympics? Someone better tell the airports and ferry ports or there'll
be chaos!

Meanwhile back in the real world , unless you're a teacher then you don't
get the option of having the whole of the summer off and most people don't
take 2 week holidays anymore anyway. 1 week is the norm these days.

B2003

When I started teaching secondary school in the 1970s (considered the
halcyon days), I got six weeks off in July and August (and you needed
it!). Before I retired in 2010, I considered myself lucky if I managed
about three weeks from the university where I worked in the same
period (and part of that involved research trips).

Dr. Barry Worthington

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:18:03 +0100
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:08:42 on Fri, 30 Mar
2012, d remarked:
The real blackmail is in the holiday companies and airlines stiffing people
with exhorbitant fares during school holidays. There's no reason for them to
do it , they just do it because they can. Its naked profiteering.

They price things according to supply and demand. It's difficult to
criticise that in a capitalist economy.

Except they put the prices up in the expectation of demand long before
the season, not actual demand during it.

What?? The demand for holidays occurs when people book them, not when
they take them.

If that were the case you'd find the prices slowly increasing as time went
by and more people booked. They don't. They start high and remain there. Its
only when they have surplus left over and its close to end of season that
the bargains start appearing.

B2003

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012 08:23:17 +0000 (UTC), d
wrote:
If that were the case you'd find the prices slowly increasing as
time went
by and more people booked.

That is merely one pricing model. Another is to charge everyone the
same (higher) prices at times of known high demand, and if you end up
with a few spare dump them for a few quid. That model might be more
profitable in some cases.

Budget airlines tend to use a combination of both models to some
extent but leaning toward the first.

Neil

--
Neil Williams, Milton Keynes, UK