Media Centre

Success for National Express companies at Rail Business Awards

24 Feb 2009

National Express train companies excelled at the annual Rail Business Awards held in London, winning two major awards, the Information Technology Excellence of the Year Award and Best Marketing Campaign.

National Express East Coast, the York-based operator, won the Information Technology Excellence of the Year Award for its customer facing website, www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com in recognition of the site's booking engine and marketing-led content pages, their design and ease of use.

The site was the first amongst UK train operators to offer its own bespoke online booking engine when it was launched in November 2007 - a step-change in ticket retailing for the UK rail industry. Its key feature is a specially developed booking engine that is simple to use. The site won praise on its launch from Passenger Focus, and amongst many benefits offers customers the opportunity to search for the best fares available.

Also celebrating is the team at Essex based train operator c2c, who won the award for Best Marketing Campaign with a winning entry for the company’s successful 2 for 1 campaign, which encourages leisure customers from the South Essex region to enjoy a day in London by using the single and compelling campaign idea, ‘Love London, You’ll Love 2 for 1’.

The 2 for 1 campaign has been developed to give customers over one hundred 2 for 1 offers when travelling by train with c2c to London. The offers include attractions, restaurants, theatres and exhibitions and the marketing materials promoting the campaign featured real Essex-based c2c customers.

Meanwhile, National Express East Anglia was shortlisted at the awards in the station excellence category for Wymondham station in Norfolk, and the company’s Fleet Engineering team was also shortlisted for rolling stock excellence.

David Franks, UK Trains Director for National Express said: ‘These awards demonstrate that National Express continues to be at the forefront of the industry in making travel simpler for our customers, through the provision of innovative marketing campaigns and customer websites that appeal and meet our customers’ expectations. I should like to commend all our train companies for their success at the Rail Business Awards.’

Note to editors:

The Rail Business Awards were held in London on 19 February 2009.