"Real-Name" and Online Booking Systems: A Godsend or a Joke?

Editor’s note: The following article, translated and edited from a Shanxi Business Newspaper article, is an "initial review" of sorts for the newly implemented real-name system and online booking service, and how they affect travellers during the historically stressful Spring Festival travel period. To gauge the pros and cons of these new features, a journalist talked to various people about their experiences booking train tickets for the 2012 Spring Festival holiday.

Photo: hnce.com.cn

In the build-up to the 2012 Spring Festival, two new "features" were implemented to make the world’s peak travel period a bit less stressful. First, the real-name system, which was first tested during the 2011 Spring Festival in Guangzhou, has now been implemented nationwide for all train tickets as a means to reduce the amount of ticket scalping and counterfeiting. Second, an online booking service was launched to relieve some of the strain of queuing in lines (sometimes for days at a time) at railway station ticket windows. With the advent of these new features, will the "hard to come by" train ticket sob stories – all too common in previous years – finally become a thing of the past? One reporter went to find out.

"Sleeper tickets were sold out in 10 minutes"

With all of the publicity surrounding the new online booking system, "fantiannie", a netizen who lives in Beijing, thought that he'd have no problem booking a Beijing-Wuhan sleeper ticket for January 17th – after all, he had a speedy broadband connection, so booking should be a breeze, right? Early in the morning on January 6th, fantiannie woke up and went to the website for online train ticket booking. To his surprise, he was unable to register with the system, and was forced to reload the page repeatedly to try again. As he discovered, the "hard to come by" tickets are still very much part of today’s reality. Talking to the reporter by phone, he said: "Even with a broadband connection I couldn't book a ticket online. Within 10 minutes, all of the sleeper tickets were already sold out." Ultimately, fantiannie had no choice but to purchase a plane ticket to fly home for the holiday.

He told the reporter that he felt that some of the rules for the real-name system were too rigid. For example, one of his colleagues needed to go to Lanzhou for business, but the non-stop train tickets from Beijing to Lanzhou were sold out. After some searching, she eventually found two connecting routes that still had available tickets (Beijing-Shijiazhuang and Shijiazhuang-Lanzhou), but she was unable to purchase these tickets because, "one ID card can only purchase one train ticket per day for the same trip." Through further interviews, the reporter found that online booking is primarily used by students and white-collar workers. They frequently complained that the online booking connection speed was too slow and that the registering/booking process was too cumbersome. However, online booking did remove the hassle of waiting in a ridiculously long queue at the ticket window, and even with these new hassles, being able to purchase tickets from home was quite nice.

"No more queuing all night. Now all it takes is 15 minutes"

Luo Shaoqing, a 49-year-old from Sichuan who currently works on the Yingwuzhou Yangtze River Bridge project in Wuhan, has lived through 30+ years of chaotic Spring Festival travelling. When interviewed by the reporter, he said that he didn’t book his ticket online, as he doesn’t have access to the Internet where he lives. Yet, even without access to this year’s new, preferable booking method, his experience queuing at the ticket window this year was noticeably better than in years past: "This year, it only took me 15 minutes to buy a ticket at the railway station," (Ironically, Luo Shaoqing was able to purchase his train ticket quicker and easier than many of the millions of people who stayed home to book their tickets online!). Sure enough, at the Wuchang Railway Station (in Wuhan), the reporter noticed that only a few people queued at each ticket window – a much different sight from the crowded conditions of the past.

"222 phone calls later, we finally booked three tickets"

A netizen from Fujian named "wanshidaijie" vented his frustration booking a ticket by telephone on Weibo. On January 6th he wrote: "I called the telephone booking service 169 times today… they said that the number was the ‘telephone booking’ hotline... what a crock!" On January 7: "222 phone calls later, we finally booked three tickets. I guess the end result is what’s most important!" Wanshidaijie later told the reporter that he and his colleagues had opted to use the telephone booking service because he didn’t have internet access. He seemed displeased with the service, noting that if one were lucky, they’d eventually get through and be able to book their tickets before they sold out. If one were less fortunate, then their hours of calling the booking hotline were spent in vain.

As the technology behind purchasing train tickets improves, the Spring Festival travel period is also quietly changing in other ways. One local, who lives near the Wuchang Railway Station, told the reporter that he felt that this year's Spring Festival ticket rush didn’t see the same "oceans of people" common in previous years. This year, things were a bit more orderly and there were fewer disputes at the station.
 

Source: sx.chinanews
 

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