Guillaume Pepy's argument for changing the name of the TGV offer to InOUI is to be one step ahead in terms of services in preparation for the opening up of mainline services to competition in 2020. The rebranding will take effect from 2 July during the Summer programme on trains running on the new Paris-Bordeaux high-speed line, before being extended this year to other routes, including Paris-Lyon and Paris-Lille. According to SNCF, this "premium" offer combining on-board comfort, services and connectivity should account for 75% of high-speed traffic in 2020, compared with 25% reserved for OUIgo, its low-cost offer launched in 2013, which currently accounts for just 5%.
InOUI will feature new 1st and 2nd class travel classes, a refurbished bar car, on-board wifi access and ticket validation on the platform before departure so that ticket inspectors are more available to passengers during the journey. However, other services will have to be paid for, such as the presence of a valet service in major stations to drop off passengers' vehicles at the car park. We hope to achieve a customer satisfaction rate of 95% in 2020″, Guillaume Pepy said on Monday during a press presentation at Paris-Montparnasse station.
The SNCF, which carried 122 million passengers on its TGVs in 2016, a small increase of 1.9% compared with 2015, hopes to attract 14 million more passengers in 2020 and also compete with its new rivals, car-sharing operators - led by Blablacar - and low-cost airlines such as easyJet.
The choice of the onomatopoeic 'Oui' completes the SNCF group's new brand universe, which now includes OUIgo for low-cost TGV travel, OuiCar for car-sharing and OUIBUS for passenger coach transport. In this context, and even if this choice may seem surprising, the SNCF has also decided to rename its distribution site Voyages-sncf.com as Oui.sncf, despite the fact that it is France's number 1 e-commerce site, with figures that make your head spin with 86 million tickets sold last year for a turnover of 4.1 billion euros. Franck Gervais, the site's managing director, promises that the switch to the web will take place between now and the end of 2017, with a version enhanced with new functions and offering customers more advice and personalisation.
