UK: The Rail Delivery Group has begun market sounding ahead of procurement of an online ticket retailing system for Great British Railways.
The Consolidated Online Retail Solution would be ‘a cost effective, market leading, online e-commerce service’ with web and app functions designed to make it simple for customers to plan and pay for travel and stay informed about their journey, as well as providing refund and compensation services, telesales and aftersales support.
The Williams-Shapps Plan proposed a ‘retail revolution’ with simpler, modern ways of paying for travel and straightforward compensation, and CORS would support these objectives, particularly around migration to digital and account-based fares, and would be able to integrate content from other suppliers with different specialisms within the wider industry sales and marketing ecosystem.
RDG envisages that any future contract would run for four years, renewable for up to a further four years, and it would be novated to a company within Great British Railways as part of wider rail reform.
