Good Travel Management specialise in helping our business travel customers save at every stage of their journey, but even without a business travel agency UK train-goers can save lots of money by pre-ordering their train tickets in advance.
To work out which journeys can save the most, Good Travel Management examined the busiest train stations in each part of the country, and how much it costs to go from these stations to four key locations.
On average, across the 464 journeys we examined, passengers can save 44% if they get an advanced ticket rather than buy at the station.
The biggest saving we saw was Southampton Central to Glasgow Central, here passengers can save a whopping £163.20 by taking a £236 anytime ticket down to a £72.80 advanced fare.
You can find our full data set here.
Most Savings to London Waterloo
Most Savings to Birmingham New Street
Most Savings to Glasgow Central
Most Savings to Leeds
Methodology
To work out this data we examined prices on the National Rail website.
For ‘Anytime’ trains we looked at prices on the 23rd October 2023 for a train on the next day. We unticked ‘offpeak’ and ‘advance’ to get a price that was more realistic for someone who might be buying their ticket at the station for immediate use.
For ‘Advance’ trains, we looked at prices for an advance train ticket price on 24th of October for 22nd of December, which is the earliest we could book for many journeys.
Train tickets were selected so that journeys were typically same-day, not overnight, with an arrival time of between 8:30-10am (closest to 9am where possible). We avoided any bus replacement options or trains at unreasonably early hours. It might be possible to travel in London for cheaper using the Underground. It might also be possible to find cheaper train ticket prices for longer journeys by splitting tickets, which was not part of this study.