Buy e- tickets decrease passenger flow to station during Tet holiday

Vietnam Railways Corporation (VNR) is scheduled to officially sell train tickets via its website www.dsvn.vn from November 21^st. The system will serve tickets for Lunar New Year 2015 from December 1st. It will operate in parallel with the traditional channels such as selling tickets at the stations and via phone.

FPT IS CEO Pham Minh Tuan expected that the e-ticketing system would not only contribute to contribute to facilitating travel for people but also help develop the railway.

According to FPT IS CEO Pham Minh Tuan, compared to other ticketing channels, the e-ticketing system provided by FPT IS would minimize the risk of suddenly increased traffic at the station during Tet holiday.

VNR will have only a common ticket store. "This means that if it is announced that tickets are still available online, they are accessible via all channels. The situation that tickets are sold out online but available at the station does not exist", said Tuan.

Another advantage of the system is to add "Waiting" function. Customers have the opportunity to buy a ticket when its previous booking is cancelled. The system will also ensure fairness under the principle of "the early bird catches the worm” ("ai đặt mua trước thì hưởng trước").

The project to provide e-ticketing system for VNR was deployed under the agreement signed by VNR and FPT in late July. With this system, customers can buy train tickets anytime, anywhere with an Internet connection. In addition, travelers can visit the site to make online bookings and select types of tickets, seats and schedule of all trains.

The system possesses a 24/7 support to answer your questions and accepts many forms of payment including online, at the station, via ATM, bank or at post offices of VNPost.

Passengers still have to go to the stations to get the paper tickets before departure. The system has not yet provided such functions as printing e-tickets and selling tickets at agents or via auto- equipment. "It is expected that this matter will be solved in Phase II. Passengers will only need show their e-ticket numbers to board the train like they do with the flight tickets,” said the CEO of FPT IS.

Answering the question "Why was the use of e-tickets not implemented right in Phase I?", the head of FPT IS said that FPT had no difficulty in technology, the existing obstacles were due to the legal framework of the State for VNR.

In terms of technique, on order that the system is not stuck because of so many visitors, the representative of FPT IS made a commitment that the system would meet the traffic for about 2 million visitors at the same time.

In the next phase, FPT will provide a complete system to apply at all stations nationwide from November 2015.

In the program, the representatives of VNR answered some questions related to the process of booking and canceling tickets as well as cutting steps in selling tickets. VNR also announced the passenger transport plan during Lunar New Year 2015 with 14 train couples, serving 12,000 seats per day.