On 22 October 2024, the Passenger Services Group (PSG) “The Future of Ticketing” Innovation Workshop took place at UIC Headquarters in Paris, with a record attendance of over 50 participants, representing key industry stakeholders, including railway undertakings, academic institutions such as the Czech Transport Research Centre, and University of Zagreb, as well as the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) and UIC.

Luca Mariorenzi, Chair of the UIC Passenger Experts Subgroup, opened the Innovation Workshop and welcomed the participants, who attended either in-person or online.

Following a quick round of introductions, Stefano Scarci, EY, presented an insightful overview of emerging trends in ticketing innovation, as digitalisation has already fundamentally transformed the traditional concept of ticketing. Current catalysts for transformation include increasing customer expectations for seamless digital experiences, the advent of dynamic offers and pricing, the shift towards account-based mobility, and the growing adoption of digital wallets. A major challenge for the future lies in eliminating the disconnect between carriers, countries, touchpoints, and modes of transport. To address this, UIC is collaborating with IATA among others, to enable an improved passenger experience by combining air and rail.

This was a topic introduced the next speaker, Ionut Badea, Head of Industry Architecture and Standards at IATA, who discussed modern airline retailing, as the airline industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation in retailing and distribution, centred around three key pillars: Digital Identity, Selling with Offers, and Fulfilling with Orders. This transformation will end the delegation of pricing to third parties, granting airlines full control over their offers (ensuring no availability without a price). Additionally, it will eliminate the need to reconcile pricing, passenger name records (PNRs), e-tickets, and electronic miscellaneous documents (EMDs), as the order will become the “single source of truth”. Consequently, fare pre-filing may no longer be necessary.

Rütger Fenkes, representing CER, provided an overview and current status update of the Rail Ticketing Roadmap. Published by CER in 2021, the roadmap outlines the sector’s vision and commitment to improving international rail ticketing, with key implementation milestones set to be achieved by the end of 2025, necessitating a collective effort from the sector (including CER, UIC, and CIT) as well as individual rail undertakings. Reports indicate that individual railway implementations are largely on track. Additional milestones, particularly those related to multimodality, are slated for completion by 2030.

Next, Daniel Strobel-Folk and Julia Püler, from the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), gave a presentation on “SimplyGo! and the Future of Ticketing – An Outlook from Austria”. SimplyGo! is an innovative function in the ÖBB app that facilitates flexible and spontaneous travel by train, bus, metro, and tram through account-based ticketing. This feature uses GPS tracking to recognize the routes travelled within Austria and calculates the appropriate public transport fare for each route the following day. Users only need to activate the feature once, after which they can immediately start traveling across Austria. To begin their journey, users swipe right before boarding their chosen means of transport and swipe left upon reaching their destination.

Interactive surveys conducted among the participants revealed that the majority of railways have either already implemented or are planning to implement certain key innovations, such as full digital ticketing, account-based ticketing, and multimodal partnerships aimed at providing door-to-door transport solutions.
In the breakout sessions, participants had the opportunity to discuss and work together on three key topics:

1. How could the rail sector accelerate the advancement of the Ticketing Roadmap to provide an integrated customer experience in a multimodal environment?

2. What are the most promising use cases of account-based ticketing and how could the rail sector benefit from it?

3. How could the rail sector make use of digital wallets to be more efficient and improve the passenger experience?

Consequently, the numerous ideas were prioritised, based on their impact and feasibility. The suggestions included enhancing cooperation between sector organisations, launching communication initiatives to promote sustainable multimodal travel, and leveraging account-based ticketing to integrate different modes of transport. The latter aims to improve the customer experience, collect valuable traveller data, and enable personalised offers. Additionally, the use of digital wallets was highlighted for its potential to enhance the user experience by simplifying the storage of digital tickets on smartphones and supporting multiple languages.