[seszett]

Yeah, I always wondered how this could be. Capitaine Train is making money just selling train tickets, without any kind of ad at any point of the process, and that's their only revenue.

On the other hand, we have the official SNCF website, which doesn't even have to be financially successful itself (since SNCF already makes money on the ticket itself), but is littered with ads, slow, ugly and unhelpful. And even PDF train tickets come with half an A4-page worth of ads.

How can this be possible?

EDIT: just looked at the train ticket I printed today, well ok, I was wrong, there is no ad on it anymore, but I'm sure there was at some point.

[ldng]

You're assuming voyages-sncf == SNCF which is not the case. It's a travel agency whose shareholders are SNCF and Expedia. So they are a private company that have a preferential treatment for which they been condemned once IIRC (not that it changed anything ...).

[Signez]

You're wrong. Expedia has no longer Voyages-SNCF.com parts since this "alliance" was condamned by French Autorité de la Concurrence (anti-trust autority).

Nowadays, the only Voyages-SNCF.com shareholder is Groupe SNCF.

[ldng]

I can find references to a fines but nothing about Expedia leaving Voyages-sncf.com capital. Really curious about it, could you point me to some reference ?

[Spone]

Capitaine Train is a registered travel agency, so they can resell SNCF tickets while getting a commission.

[bsaul]

seszett : it probably depends if you're paying for regular tickets or iDTGV which is a separate organization from SNCF, selling train tickets through the same website. They put ads on their tickets, but they're kind of a low-cost train operator.