Redspottedhanky.com Encourages Christmas Train Travellers to Book Now to Reap Savings of 57 Million Pounds Sterling

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Sep 28, 2010, 01:26 ET

LONDON, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Redspottedhanky.com has revealed that UK travellers expecting to travel by train to see loved ones during Christmas should book their journey now in order to save a combined 57 million pounds on rail fares.

A new survey has shown almost half (47%) of Christmas* train travellers wait until the last minute to book their train tickets online. This means Britons are spending their precious pounds on their journey instead of gifts for family and friends.

Conducted by redspottedhanky.com, the survey revealed more than one in five train journeys (22%) will not be booked until two weeks before Christmas, costing travellers an average of 23 per cent more.

This could be avoided if commuters heed redspottedhanky.com's advice and book their Christmas train fares in advance.

"To put it in context, an additional 57 million pounds in the Christmas gift budget of rail commuters could mean almost half a million children could be unwrapping the new iPod Nano on Christmas morning. Almost 3.2 million people could have the Mad Men season one and two boxset or you could make 390, 000 rail trips from London to Birmingham and back," said Ursula Morgenstern of redspottedhanky.com.

"We know that not everyone has their Christmas plans finalised this early but there are big savings that can be made by booking Christmas train fares in advance."

Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for train travel but can also be one of the most expensive. Further research conducted by redspottedhanky.com shows that fares for inter-city journeys have increased by 39% in real terms since 1995. With rumours of further increases of up to 10% coming in January next year, train travel is not going to get cheaper.

Ursula Morgenstern continued: "We are striving to bring down the cost of train travel and give something back to our loyal customers especially at this time of year. Whilst we are already the cheapest independent website to book train tickets, we know we have much more to do and can't wait to deliver even greater outstanding savings to our customers."

Notes to editors:

* The Christmas Period is from 20/12 – 03/01

About redspottedhanky.com

Atos Origin, a leading international IT services provider specialising in hi-tech transactional services, has radically developed its strategy to grow its revenue by venturing into the B2C arena with the launch of redspottedhanky.com, the first consumer service from the IT B2B player.

Redspottedhanky.com is an online travel retailer, providing an easy way for leisure and business travellers to compare and book cheap rail tickets online, and to save up to 80% on the cost of tickets booked in advance. Most notably, redspottedhanky.com offers something truly unique when buying cheap train tickets: it is the first ever British online retailer to offer loyalty points that can be redeemed against future train travel for any journey in Great Britain. For regular train travellers in these cash-strapped times, participation in the loyalty scheme would allow them to earn points for redemption against future rail travel and be rewarded beyond the price of a single ticket.