Eurostar booking-window bonkersness

A few months ago, Eurostar did something very significant without telling anyone.

Previously, you could book ordinary Eurostar trains up to 330 days before your travel date. 

However, in April 2024, Eurostar reduced the booking window to 6 to 8 months, without any announcement about this big change.

This radical change affects 'core-routes', such as between London and Paris.

This strikes me as a monumental own goal by Eurostar. Own goals are a regular feature of what Eurostar does. Once again, it's shot itself in the foot.

While counting 330 days ahead is easy using online date calculators, there’s no way of doing that with a 6 to 8-month booking window because it’s a vague, season-dependent period. 

Eurostar has sown unpredictability where none was growing. There’s now no exact way of knowing when trains will go on sale. To find out, you have to keep checking it's website. In theory, you could check online for 60 days in a row and only on the 60th day find that your train is on sale. What a massive waste of time! 

Currently, you can book a Eurostar from London to Paris up to Sat 8th Feb 2025. What date tickets for Sun 9th Feb will go on sale is anyone’s guess. As Chrissie Hynde would say, “Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday.”

When I asked a Eurostar spokesperson the reason for the change, they told me: 

"This change was made to harmonise our booking windows for all Eurostar trains following the merger between Eurostar and Thalys. Our teams found that only 4% of customers booked their tickets to and from London 6–11 months in advance, which is why we chose the 6–8 month window."

This would seem to be a counterproductive approach, for several reasons. 

 1.  The 4% who do book in advance are disproportionately valuable. They make plans and then, in many cases, invite friends to join their plans—they are the trendsetters for travel.

2.  Purchase psychology: if you have a dinner party and you want people to come at 8pm, invite them for 7.30pm. People need pre-warning and flexibility when it comes to making plans. Everyone knows this—except Eurostar. 

3.  Not being able to predict when a Eurostar train goes on sale increases the risk of missing the date of sale, making people more likely to book a flight already on sale. Fewer options for train travel = more reluctant switcing to flying!

If the proportion of people booking 6–11 months in advance is only 4%, why doesn’t Eurostar encourage advance bookings by working with the travel industry to enable more tour operators to create packages with rail?

What Eurostar did announce in April, instead, was it's new travel classes: https://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/travel-info/eurostar-experience/travel-classes

But to omit the information about how you've made it more difficult journeys to be booked, seems a serious disservice to travellers.

Well done Eurostar! Next time we're trying not to organise a piss-up in a brewery, we’ll be in touch!