Are you planning to travel by train during the Christmas holidays? Now is the time to book. This Wednesday, October 4, SNCF is opening TGV inOui and Intercités tickets for sale for the period from December 10, 2023 to January 9, 2024 inclusive. For its part, Ouigo will open reservations for journeys until July 5, 2024; an opportunity to already plan your spring weekends, especially during the May holidays. The company vaguely indicates that sales open “at dawn”. Usually it takes place at 6 a.m.
The first to book are the most likely to find the best rates… or simply get a place. Trains running in the run-up to Christmas are traditionally full on the most popular routes. For the winter holidays, you will have to wait until the next sales opening on November 15, when trains running from February 10 to March 29, 2024 will be bookable.
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International TGV inOui trains to Spain, Switzerland (TGV Lyria) and Germany (DB-SNCF in cooperation) can be booked up to 6 months in advance. At Eurostar (which has just merged with Thalys), reservations are already open until the end of July between Paris and London and until the end of February between Paris and Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. At Trenitalia, sales open this Tuesday, October 3 for the next six rolling months, i.e. until the beginning of April 2024. Please note that due to the landslide in Savoie, only journeys between Paris and Lyon are offered, the connections to Turin and Milan being suspended until further notice, probably for another “short year”.
During this opening of sales, SNCF customers will be able to discover several new products. Because traveling as a family can represent a certain cost, SNCF Connect now offers payment in three or four installments for reservations of an amount equal to or greater than €150. This service incurs a 1.5% fee. SNCF Connect also announces the implementation by the end of October of a “full train alert”. The principle ? If a train is full, you sign up for a waiting list to be notified as soon as a place becomes available.
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Among the other new features recently implemented, the increase of ten euros in the capped prices enjoyed by Avantage card holders. Since the beginning of September, these ceilings have risen to €49, €69 and €89 depending on the distance for a 2nd class journey on the TGV inOui. As a reminder, SNCF tightened its conditions for exchanging and canceling TGV inOui and Intercités tickets in February. Since then, changing your reservation can be done free of charge up to six days before departure, compared to three previously. Less than six days before departure, a penalty of €19 applies.
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This article is being updated.
