Insights from Another Industry
What can we learn from the retail sector?
Leisure passenger numbers are now the greatest proportion of passenger journeys, so rail needs to focus its efforts there. Looking at the changes in the retail sector and how it has evolved since the end of the pandemic may help rail too.
For passengers, rail has upped its game hugely in recent decades. Gone are the curled sliced white bread sandwiches of (probably inaccurate) British Rail ill-repute, and in are decidedly up-market stations as destinations for the stylish and well-heeled. Think quality coffee and refreshments as standard at many stations, and St Pancras International including Fortnum & Mason, Foyles, and other designer retailers in its pre-travel estate. It’s been an astonishing transformation very much for the better.
And then along comes a pandemic and changes the pattern of passenger usage. Leisure passengers now matter much more, but car ownership is already high and other competitors (coach travel, car sharing) exist and can be very cheap. Responding to this situation is a serious challenge for non-freight rail post-pandemic.
The traditional answer has been to emphasise the sustainability advantage that rail has. While that is undoubtedly true and very important, it won’t persuade all prospects. We need to find a different approach and other markets to target in addition to the eco-conscious. This is where learning from other sectors, and in particular the retail sector, could help rail.
Post-pandemic, retail has learned that it needs to become a destination worthy of a visit to get the footfall it needs for sales. Footfall to the local town or city centre is no longer guaranteed when much of retail can take place online. Retail itself needs to provide a changing mixture of experiences to tempt customers back, not just once but many times. Many cities now have shopping centres or large department stores offering temporary and attractive pop-ups or displays of unusual or specialised goods that liven the retail environment. These temporary offerings are relevant to some customers, attract those who didn’t know previously of the product, and convey a general feeling of ‘going shopping’ as a desirable and pleasurable event to be repeated.
Applying these insights means that rail also needs to understand itself as part of the destination. It has stunning achievements in transforming stations to build on here, but we need to go even further.
So, at the risk of cultural appropriation, how about this for an experience to copy: video buses in India in the late 1980s. They were then one of the best ways of experiencing Bollywood movies in all their glory. (Other, stay-at-home, safer, and quieter methods are available.) If long-distance buses in India could install video players and TVs for passengers on long journeys in the 1980s, and airlines already do this on most flights, why can’t rail do something similar for its leisure passengers in the 2020s? Now that leisure passengers are a key target segment for rail, we need to find ways to enhance the experience of those leisure passengers particularly during the journey, on board trains.
You may be worrying that the suggestion is Bollywood movies all day, every day, on every carriage, in every passenger train. That’s not quite the insight from retail. The insight from retail is for a changing mixture of temporary offerings in part of their premises. The aim is to delight some customers and enliven the whole experience, so that going shopping becomes more of an event. And you need to go back fairly frequently because the next temporary display might be just what you wanted.
There would be technical challenges and safety issues to overcome, but maybe a theme carriage with videos and culturally consistent refreshments and a digital marketing campaign before, during, and after some leisure journeys should be thought about.
