Last December the state government of NSW in Australia decided to launch Family Funday Sunday. The idea was to bring more people onto ferries and into the city. To do this it cut the price a family ticket to just $2.50 (about £1.20). The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Sunday was already the most crowded day of the week for ferry rides so guess what happened. The ferries, already busy, couldn’t cope whilst trains and buses had loads of capacity but no discounted offers.
It got so bad that the last RiverCat to Parramatta (about an hour’s journey) couldn’t carry the last 100 passengers so they were left to their own devices.
The obvious change seems to give discounts on trains and buses and forget discounting the ferries. (although getting on the best harbour in the world on a gorgeous day is very enticing)
Now in London, we have a pretty expensive underground, a pretty expensive bus service (compared to Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham, New York, Boston, Paris and almost another hundred or so places you could name) but do we entice visitors with discounts at slack times? Not really, no we just have the equivalent of a cheap day return. And if you commute into London for a visit that gets expensive. From Guildford it is £15.90 with the tube/bus usage included. Last week I got a single to Leeds from Kings Cross for £11.50!
No chance of attracting too many tourists in the south east with our prices is there?