Tuesday 18 April 2017

Canada: VIA Rail responds to incredible demand for Canada 150 youth passes

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This week, we launched an exciting new offer to celebrate Canada 150 with an unlimited travel pass for young people during the month of July. The interest in this offer was unprecedented. We originally planned to make 1,867 passes available. Due to the incredible demand, we extended the offer past the original commitment. More than 4,000 Canadians purchased passes to travel across Canada.

During this time, our web site experienced five times our usual traffic, causing extended wait times for our customers. We failed to explain that unlimited passes meant the number of trips was unlimited, as opposed to the quantities of passes available. We know our customers, particularly Canadian youth, were frustrated and we are committed to addressing their concerns.

In response, we took the following steps:

  • To address the incredible demand and lengthy wait times, we extended the hours of the sale to 3 am ET Thursday March 30. However, due to the limited number of physical seats available on the trains during the month of July we could not extend it further.
  • We will honour every pass sold. This totals more than 4,000, in 36 hours. This is well beyond the 1,867 we had initially planned to make available for the month of July.

VIA Rail has a proud record of bringing Canadians together and helping us discover our great country. We value our customers and appreciate the unprecedented interest in exploring Canada on our trains.

(Source: VIA Rail)

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