The company takes advantage of the SNCF strikes to offer coach journeys.
BlaBlaCar has detected an opportunity following the SNCF beaded strike that penalizes passengers (soon see the HON Analysis "SNCF strikes: do they derail the hotel industry?"). The company then embarked on bus transport and thus proposed various routes on its application.
The demand exploded over the periods concerned with 184,000 seats proposed by the startup on Tuesday, April 3, "three times more than the average of a normal Tuesday" and has for objective "five million seats offered per month on BlaBlaCar during strikes" reports Business Insider.
The brand launched into this new market without reaping the associated constraints. Thus, the company calls upon the three partner coach operators (Chambon, Inter2000 and Orain) to operate the service. As an intermediary, it will not require a carrier licence allowing "buses to simply publish some of their routes on our platform".
As far as prices are concerned, those of the operators will be applied. These operators do not intend to change the price over time once the route is published on the platform," the company says.
"It's still a little early to make an assessment but we noticed that buses were full, especially on the Paris - Rennes link. As such, we can say that the objective of offering people a mobility solution has been achieved," says a BlaBlaCar spokesman.
A total of 7.1 million passengers used the liberalised coach lines in France last year, almost 15% more than in 2016, according to data published by Arafer, the regulatory authority for rail and road transport.
