Rail-booking agents vs online booking

Sometimes skiers ask me whether it’s better to book tickets online oneself or to use the services of a rail-booking agent. 

The answer is, as with many things, it depends on couple of factors. 

One factor is the kind of journey it is. Some journeys, like going from London to Austria by Eurostar combined with the NIghtjet, can be particularly tricky to book online. A rail-booking agent can put this journey together for you. 

Another is whether you are travelling on a peak date or not.  In off-peak dates, journeys such as a Eurostar + TGV to a French ski resort can be straightforward to book online. But over the past few seasons, getting tickets for peak dates has felt like a bit of a bun fight online. 

The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Naturally, demand for rail travel may be increasing (it would be odd if it wasn’t). But it may be that French school groups block-book some of the tickets in advance. Those meddling kids!

I used to feel that booking online vs using a rail-booking agent was a bit, ‘six of one, half-a-dozen of the other’. But from seeing the success that skiers have had using rail-booking agents for peak dates, and from speaking directly with agents myself, my view is that it’s certainly worth contacting an agent if you have a peak date you are looking to book travel for, to see what they say. 

One big advantage of agents is that they tailor-make your journey. You can choose a schedule that suits your party best without worrying about the frustrations of making it work when booking online.

You benefit from human, rather than algorithmic, intelligence. Rail-booking agents can create an itinerary of trains you want and book them in the most convenient and economical way possible.

In cases where tickets for different legs of a journey appear at different times, booking agencies can hold tickets for one train while waiting for others to go on sale, before combining them to give you a no-commitment quote at the best available fare.

For this service, agents charge a modest fee, which is often your best value for time and money considering the benefits of their service.

Remember that these are experienced small businesses that offer a very useful service based on many years of experience. So, give them as much context as could be useful (number of people, dates, destination, the type of journey you are looking to book etc). 

And if they start helping you and you decide you no longer need their services on this occasion, let them know too. They might be searching for or holding tickets for you. So, if you let them know you no longer need them to do that, it makes it much easier for them. 

I’ll always be interested in how you get on, so I can update and improve my advice accordingly. 

The two rail-booking agents that I recommend are Railtrail and Trainseurope: 

Railtrail
Over 40 years experience. 
Railtrail charges a fee of £20 per traveller (sometimes less for larger groups) 
Email: enquiry@railtrail.co.uk

Trainseurope
Established in 1987.
Trainseurope charges a fee of £10 per traveller.
Email: info@trainseurope.co.uk

There may be more rail-booking agents that are also excellent, but the ones above a tried and tested.