Travel company's rail ticketing app hits the tracks the hard way in UK

Chinese travel service company Ctrip's experience in gaining mainstream acceptance of its train ticket booking app in the United Kingdom demonstrates the importance of branding.

Amy Wei, Ctrip's CEO of international train ticketing, said, "Initially, we focused on building an excellent product, but when customer growth did not take off as we expected in the first few months, we realized that our branding efforts were insufficient."

The app, called Trainpal, works through a "split ticketing" algorithm to help UK consumers save money when booking rail trips. Essentially, it helps travelers to split their journeys into peak-hours and off-peak-hours, to ensure they only buy the more expensive tickets for journeys falling within peak hours.