Online booking system of China railways

Spring Festival holiday began on January 22nd, 2012 in China. This 7-day period for employees is the longest holiday of a year. During the holiday, people usually go back their hometown for a sweet gather of family or go to travel for a good relax. Apparently, large amount of travelling people resulted in travel rush, which is also known as the largest global “short-term migration”. Spring Festival travel rush usually starts from 15 days before till 25 days after the first day of Spring Festival. Great transportation problems were raised every year such as train delay, travellers stranded and difficulty in buying train ticket.

Today, our focus is ticket reservation system, as it is relevant to online booking system in tourism. Apart from railway station, designated ticket office and travel agency, and after the telephone booking available for High Speed Trains, people now can also buy all train tickets online and by telephone this year. Passengers can buy ticket online with China Railway Customer Service Center (CRCSC) (www.12306.cn) since Jun.1st 2011. Employment of IT in booking and selling tickets largely relieve the load of bricks-and-mortar.

From the year 2012, real-name policy is implemented both in buying train tickets and checking-in.

With valid ID, people can book tickets for 1-10 days advance (1-12 days in advance for 2012 Spring Festival Rush). An e-currency payment service (like PayPal) is a must for purchasing online. Main bank cards stipulated by China UnionPay support the online secure payment.

The pilot project is now practicing in 50 stations includes Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chengdu and their subordinates. The passenger's identity information is printed on the ticket. Passengers need to take their valid travel documents with the train tickets and check-in in those stations.

The online reservation service is quite necessary nowadays. It is a trend of the world. This new online real-name booking system will relieve the long queues in front of ticket offices and will better the situation of scalpers. However, the majority of the passengers during the Spring Festival Rush are migrant rural workers. They work hard for days and nights all the year round. Few of them ever get good education. The online reservation may not be very practical for them. And the booking system didn’t work very well. It showed up paralysis from time to time. According to staff in network department of CRCSC, there are 100 thousand people booking online per second and the peak second is 5 million people.

Source:

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/spring-festival-rush.htm