Back in December I posted about Eurostar extending their booking window from four months to six months. This seemed a sensible thing for them to do, especially for the leisure market, and I fully expected it to become permanent.
It seems not.
A Head for Points reader recently contacted Eurostar to ask why he could not book a train for later in the year and was told:
“The extended booking horizon was a trial through the summer to allow our customers from the USA, Australia and such like to be able to plan their travel well in advance along with their flights and was a success. However, we are unable to maintain this horizon throughout the winter as we have been unable to secure agreement from the other line operators involved at this time.
Currently the horizon is still 180 days at our call centre but this will start to shrink back to normal throughout July/August and the website is further restricted due to system restraints which means that the booking horizons for online are not able to marry up with the booking horizon here at the contact centre. As the horizon shrinks back to 120 day the website will realign with the contact centre.”
…. which is a shame.
PS. Despite my scathing review of Eurostar food earlier this year, I am booked on them again (Standard Premier) in September as we are taking the kids to Paris and Disney. This was booked as an American Express Membership Rewards conversion into Eurostar Frequent Traveller points, before anyone asks! It will be interesting to see if anything has improved.
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