The SNCF website was faced with record traffic on October 4 during the launch of Christmas ticket sales.
Wednesday October 4, 2023 marked an important day for SNCF train users. It was the opening date for reservations for the end-of-year period, a time when many users take the TGV, Intercités or Ouigo. And from the early hours of the morning, the SNCF Connect site was stormed to the point of giving up before 8 a.m., displaying a message on the home page inviting Internet users to wait. Sales had started just an hour before, at 7 a.m. that same Wednesday.
“There is a bit of a wait, many of you want to book your train tickets, please try again in a few moments”, was displayed upon arrival on the site and for long minutes all morning. Before midday, the situation was able to return to order and connections resumed, after a record recorded on the SNCF Connect site. Because if the site has experienced such difficulties, the SNCF assures that it is because of a record number of connections.
She told us that she had experienced a record peak in traffic, with up to a million connections per minute on her SNCF Connect site. “At the height of the connection peak, the equivalent of 6 filled TGVs per minute were sold on the site and the application,” the company tells us, which confirms a 230% increase in connections during the morning compared to at the same opening of sales last year.
Unsurprisingly, the most popular journeys are those leading to large cities departing from or arriving in Paris: Paris-Bordeaux, Paris-Marseille, Paris-Lyon, Paris-Toulouse, Paris-Rennes or Paris-Avignon have were the most popular over the period from December 22 to January 7, 2024.
