SNCF is stopping sales of most international tickets – a decision rooted in incompetence, and communicated with malevolence

If you want to travel on 22nd May 2024 from Paris to Berlin (Germany), Verviers (Belgium) or Luzern (Switzerland), the app and website for SNCF ticketing, SNCF Connect, will show you prices and sell you a ticket. Try the same on 24th May 2024 and it will not. Here are the screenshots to prove it:

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Even connections to towns just the other side of the border – like Mouscron (Belgium) or Rastatt (Germany) are no longer available for purchase:

What is going on here?

As this explanation page on the SNCF website outlines, from 23rd May only a very limited selection of international tickets are available for sale from SNCF. There’s also a map listing what is available that looks like it was made in MS Paint.

Let’s not play down the significance of this.

SNCF Connect could until now sell you a ticket to any station in Netherlands (now reduced to just Amsterdam, Schiphol and Rotterdam), any station in Belgium (now just Antwerpen, Bruxelles, Liège), any station in Germany (now just the few stations directly served by cross border ICEs and TGVs), any station in Switzerland (now just anything served by TGV Lyria), any station in Italy (now just Ventimiglia, Torino, Milano) and any high speed station in Spain (now just Barcelona, Girona, Figueres).

What the website of course does not say is why the change happened.

So I set about getting to the bottom of the issue.

On Monday 13th May I was travelling through Strasbourg so headed to the Grandes Lignes ticket office to ask. These conversations were in French, translated into English here.

Me: “I want to take a train from Strasbourg to Berlin in mid-June, but I cannot get a price in SNCF Connect, can you help me?”
SNCF employee: “It’s not possible any more”
Me: “Really? Why is that?”
SNCF: “It’s the fault of Deutsche Bahn!”
Me (somewhat surprised at this point): “But other railways manage to sell Deutsche Bahn tickets still.”
SNCF: “It’s Deutsche Bahn”

I tried again at Grandes Lignes at Paris Austerlitz on Friday 17 May.

Me: “I cannot manage to book a ticket on SNCF Connect from Paris to Berlin in June”
SNCF: “It’s not possible any more. You will have to try with Deutsche Bahn or Trainline”
(bit of a jaw drop here – Trainline, SNCF’s main ticket sales competitor?)
Me: “Sorry, but I would like to know why this is.”
SNCF: “It’s Europe’s fault”
Me: “So please tell me this. If Deutsche Bahn can still sell SNCB tickets, ÖBB can still sell Trenitalia, but SNCF cannot sell any of these any more, then how can it be Europe’s fault that SNCF cannot sell these tickets?”
SNCF: “But it is international agreements!”

And that was then I broke, and told the employee what the actual reason is. Because Le Figaro has the gist of it, and I have had this confirmed to me by sources in other rail firms. SNCF’s IT system for these sales – Résarail – is outdated and being closed down, and the new system is not yet available. And in the meantime sales of these tickets are simply not possible. Incompetence in other words. There is a financial consequence too – it is rumoured that railways receive a 10% commission on these sales amongst themselves. Bang goes that income for SNCF.

But the communication about why this is the case crosses over into malevolence. Rather than facing up to the problem, SNCF resorts to finger pointing – at Deutsche Bahn, Europe, and international agreements. None of which are the reason.

Also what SNCF is doing here is precisely the opposite of what it says it wants to do in its European Parliament election manifesto (full PDF here): “To attract more passengers, we are constantly seeking to improve the quality of our service and are investing heavily in all aspects of customer satisfaction. We have also made a joint commitment with our European partners to improve international ticketing“. If we are to believe the Community of European Railways – of which SNCF is a member – it is only a matter of time before state owned railway firms in Europe sort out these cross border ticketing headaches – while the actual behaviour of one of Europe’s largest railway companies is precisely the opposite.

The likes of Trainline, Omio, SNCB International and Deutsche Bahn will pick up most of the slack, but not all. Passengers unable to book online and who previous relied on purchasing these tickets at ticket offices in France will be left stuck.

None of this is clever or sensible, but sadly that is what you get from SNCF when it comes to anything international.

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