GNER launches new web site
by JFC AdminIt has been known for a few months that GNER has been planning to roll out a new and improved online booking engine, but what came as a surprise to me was they have rolled out an entirely new website today despite their franchise coming to an end on the 9th December.
The new site integrates well with the new booking engine and it’s good to see an alternative to the existing rail booking engines all of which are based on thetrainline.com which has barely seen any improvements since its launch. The booking engine was developed by Atos Origin so I’m not sure who holds the rights to the software but whoever owns it will surely want to licence it to other rail companies. I don’t know what the future of this site will be if other companies don’t licence it but I’m guessing it will have to close on the last day of GNER’s franchise.
This site seems to be better than thetrainline in every way except for the fact that Amex is currently not accepted. I was originally told that Amex support would be added by launch time but now that hasn’t happened I was told it was postponed until 2008 - presumably if another company takes over the sites operation.
There’s not many clues on GNER’s website indicating that their franchise will soon be over, the only mention I could see was on the GNERtime page. However, the trains are already being debranded, most trains already have most of their GNER branding removed from the exterior.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:11 am
[…] Although I think most of us would agree that overall the new GNER booking engine is a big improvement over the old one that was based on thetrainline.com. However, it does have one drawback - it does not currently accept American Express. You can use the regular trainline.com booking engine but the 10% discount is not applied there (and they charge a credit card booking fee). There is a work around (for the moment) if you want to pay with Amex, you can access the old booking engine using this link. It’s ugly as most of the graphics have been removed, but everything still works as expected including the 10% discount on advance purchase fares and of course there’s no booking fee. If you’re using Visa, Mastercard or Maestro then you’re better off using the new engine. […]
December 8th, 2007 at 9:46 am
The NX website just looks amateurish all round. The whole design and
colourscheme looks a bit playgroup compared to the professional (and very
Britich) colours of the GNER site and livery.
December 8th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
[…] It looks like the future of GNER’s new web site and booking engine is safe. If you visit nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk at the moment all you get as an ‘under construction’ notice, however if you look up the IP address of the site you will see that it is the same as the GNER site. Also tickets.nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk currently displays the GNER booking engine. Presumably from midnight all they need to do is change a setting and the new National Express brand will appear in place of GNER. It’ll be a shame to see the GNER brand disappear but at least the new website will be used for more than a couple of weeks. […]