The national rail operator DSB has begun implementing a strategy to tempt passengers away from crowded rush-hour trains by offering discount tickets at less popular times.

In November, Flemming Jensen, the CEO of DSB, explained the rationale behind the strategy to Jyllands-Posten.

“We have trains that are very full, but overall we operate well beneath our  capacity and we would like to fill these trains more,” he said.

“We would like to develop our products in a direction so we can maintain the prices we have for our rush-hour traffic, and then to a greater extent try to move some of our customers out of the crowded trains who maybe don’t necessarily need to travel during the rush hour.”

Already under way
Today Aske Wieth-Knudsen, the head of business development at DSB, confirmed that implementing the strategy is already under way.

“From January 1 we began a sale where we are offering our low-cost Orange tickets for just 99 kroner. We are becoming more aggressive with the marketing of these tickets by issuing more of them and offering them at extremely competitive prices,” he said.

Wieth-Knudsen explained that the Orange tickets are for the less demanded departures and that more Orange campaigns are in the pipeline.

“But we are also working on other promotions, such as making offers based on events. In December we ran a campaign offering discount tickets to places like Hamburg and Lübeck, where people often visit Christmas markets. We expect to do more more campaigns with these event-based tickets in the future,” he said.

“In addition, for more than a year we have been offering a discount of 20 percent on off-peak local travel using the travel card Rejsekort.”