Visually, the change is clear. Gone is the orange-yellow of the “Yes” period, make way for a sober and chic environment. The new SNCF Connect application and website were activated on Tuesday 25 January, replacing Oui.sncf. All visitors to the Internet ticket purchase site are now automatically redirected to the new portal (www.sncf-connect.com). As for users of the smartphone application, they will switch to its new configuration, if they have not seen it yet. This should happen automatically within the week.
The transformation is not just cosmetic. By launching SNCF Connect, the railway group is making a bet. That of modifying in depth the first French merchant site, to, first, simplify and develop the use of public transport and, then, increase its volume of business. The objective is to increase from 4.3 billion euros per year today to 6.5 billion in 2025.
“Our ambition is for all French people to have SNCF Connect in their pocket, explains Anne Pruvot, Managing Director of SNCF Connect & Tech. The main objective is to bring more simplicity to our customers. The new app will bring together in a single place the functionalities of the different platforms–forms of the SNCF, including Oui.sncf, but also L’Assistant SNCF or more specialized apps such as, for example, Ma Ligne C, dedicated to monitoring the RER C. “
Designed as a door-to-door route planner
However, SNCF has decided not to remove all of its apps other than SNCF Connect. “There is no reason to take away from our customers a tool with which they have established habits, underline Mme Pruvot. What changes is that all the answers are in SNCF Connect, which was not the case with Oui.sncf. » Note, however: it will no longer be possible to buy TER tickets through L’Assistant SNCF.
Designed as a door-to-door route planner, SNCF Connect is supposed to allow you to find a transport route (mostly public) and pay for all the tickets that go with it. But the app, in theory universal, still has a few holes in its net. Concretely, SNCF Connect allows you, as of today, to buy long-distance train tickets (TGV and Intercités) and car rentals, which was already the case in Oui.sncf, but also TER and metro and RER tickets in Paris, as well as coach journeys and carpooling (Flixbus, Blablacar).
On the other hand, RER tickets and trains in the Paris region are still missing, all urban transport outside Paris, taxis, VTCs and competition trains, such as the Trenitalia Paris-Lyon (as well as, strangely, the Spanish Ouigo of the SNCF). Mme Pruvot promises rapid diversification of accessible transport in SNCF Connect: “Provided that the tickets are accessible in digital version – this is precisely what is blocking the Parisian suburbs –, local transport in large and small French cities will be added in waves over the course of 2022.”